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Chapter Text

Death was a peculiar thing. For the most part, Bilbo thought the act of death was painful. There was nothing peaceful about death, not for the people witnessing it and certainly not for the people experiencing it. Death was cruel and it took and took and took until there was nothing left but empty rooms and unclaimed seats at the dinner table. First had been his parents and then there had been some cousins and great aunts.

And then there was the death he would never forget.

In his book, the story that he had read to Frodo and the other faunts whenever they had claimed they couldn’t sleep, he said he had been knocked out. He claimed that the falling stones had rendered him unconscious and that he spoke to him in the tents. Bilbo had woven a wonderful tale of forgiveness and kingly regret. He had whispered in the night about being sent home with grand accolades and well wishes.

(In writing his book, Bilbo had discovered why no one wrote of the aftermath of war.)

But Bilbo had been a burglar, a trickster and dragon riddler. Twisting the truth and soothing the fears of a few faunts had taken little to no effort at all. He hadn’t been unconscious in the field. He had been up there on the hill, Sting forgotten at his side as he had tried to sooth a dying man with the thought that help was coming and forgiveness was not needed. In truth, Bilbo didn’t know the exact moment he had died. It could have been a few moments after he had tried to push Bilbo towards the west, to his books and armchair. It could have been in the moment Bilbo had leaned back and shouted that the eagles were flying overhead. It could have even been the moment Dwalin dropped his axes onto the ice and screamed. 

In the end, Bilbo supposed it didn’t matter. He had died and Bilbo couldn’t stay.

In all his long years, Bilbo had never managed to forgive Death. Not since the ice and the realization the body beneath him was cold, or since a young faunt had sat in his study while Bilbo accepted two waterlogged cloaks on his behalf. Death was cruel and Bilbo had lived long enough to see almost everyone important to him die.

When Bilbo had retired to Rivendell, his body failing him long before he could attempt one last trip over the mountains, Elrond had been kind enough to host him. He had spent many an afternoon with the lord and a few more in the library. But he did not mind the conversations he had with the elf, even when the conversations had eventually led to talks with the Dundain.

Those days were foggy in his memory, although there were a few bright spots of poetry and laughter. His wit had been failing him then, turning him into a shell of himself. (Was it better that he hadn’t realized? Was it better that he coasted from moment to moment, health failing and mind escaping him to dance up among the clouds? Was it kinder? Or was it cruel to the elven people who watched his decline?)

He did remember talking about ‘end of life’ and mortality. He remembered it clearly, if only because so many of the elven people who took shelter in Rivendell did not understand his blaise attitude towards it all. Oh, he had been mad. He had been frustrated and enraged when he realized he could go no further towards the mountain he so desperately sought. But there had been acceptance too. He had never forgiven death, but he did not fear it.

Death came for everyone and Bilbo could do little to stand against it. (He could, however, listen to a ring. He could listen to a little voice that begged and pleaded and sang of worship and the end of all endings. )

(But that voice was gone.)

(And his child had paid a terrible price.)

Some people said that Bilbo would probably meet Death as an old friend when his time came.

Those people had never known Bilbo past acquaintanceship.

To be quite frank, Bilbo had been saying since his early fifties that he'd like to meet Death with a frying pan. He'd also like to meet Death while holding Sting , but Bilbo wasn't too picky and Frodo had needed the sword more than he did in the end. Either way, both items could cause damage and only one of them had the added benefit of being inconspicuous.

Bilbo didn’t want to kill death- that was rather counter productive, in an ironic sort of way- but he did want to take out a few kneecaps. (Frodo’s parents had gone too soon. His own mother had wasted away after his father’s death. Bilbo had watched a good dwarf die and then helped find the bodies of two boys curled around each other on the battlefield.) Death had never been a friend of his, only an acquaintance Bilbo had no choice but to invite to the midsummer social and hoped that the invite would get lost in the mail.

Bilbo wasn't so puffed up and full of himself to think that his death would garner the attention of Lord Mandos himself, but on the other hand, Bilbo had made friends in some very high places. High enough places that he was sailing to the Pure Lands and not to the Gardens of his forefathers.

So when Bilbo passed in the night, hardly more than a day from shore, he could honestly say he wasn't expecting….this.

“Bingo Boggens?” The figure said, skeletal hands holding a parchment a mere breath away from a waxy and pointed face as if it could not read the chicken scratch without squinting and cursing.

Bilbo could do little but stare at the figure. For the first time in nearly forty years, Bilbo could move his hands without strain. He could stand tall and his lungs did not rattle in his chest. He could see without squinting and hear clearly enough to catch the soft ‘swish-skith’ of the figure’s cloak.

Most miraculously of all (the most damning of all) was that for the first time in decades Bilbo's mind was clear. When was the last time Bilbo had not heard the voice? When was the last time he had not had hands absently fumble to his pockets and thoughts that did not circle obsessively over a trinket that mattered little when compared to the health and happiness of his nephew?

(When was the last time Bilbo had been anything more than a shade of himself?)

So Bilbo stood there, lax and pain-free, and he stared up at the waxen figure that could be nothing else but a servant of Lord Mandos. He stared and he thought, and he wondered.

In his early years, Bilbo had thought he would ‘wake up’ beside his body. He thought a reaper would appear and would usher him to the great Party Tree, past those gnarled roots to the edge of the Lady's Garden. He had thought he would be greeted and escorted.

In later years, when his nephew had gone off with wee Gimli, Golin's boy, and stood against the darkness and Mordor, Bilbo had thought he would be shunned. He had thought he would be turned away from the Garden by poor Prim and Drogo. Bilbo had been the one to pick up the ring. Bilbo had been the one who dragged eyes towards the Shrine. Bilbo had been the one who was too swallowed by grief to wonder about a ‘funny little trickent’. 

Bilbo did not deserve to rest in the Garden and perhaps that was why he had agreed to go to the Pure Lands of the elves. He could rest there, heal there, and he would not have to face his people. Part of Bilbo thought this was cowardness. The other part of him, the one that was tired and had rewritten a story so that the worst bits were softened, knew that there was nothing the residents of the Garden could say to him that Bilbo had not already thought to himself.

That was the worst bit of travelling with a dwarf that suffered self-flagnation; you learned to recognize it in yourself.

“Bingo Boggens,” the figure repeated again as it stashed the paper into a hidden pocket in its long cloak. “What a peculiar name.”

Bilbo had gone by many names in his life. Mad Baggins, Master Burglar, Dragon-Riddler, thief. He was used to them, had long grown used to looking up whenever a name was shouted in the market. His father had a saying, ‘I don’t care what you call me, as long as you do not call me late for dinner.’ And Bilbo had taken that saying close to his heart and lived by it in his later years.

Bilbo had gone by many names, but there were only two people who were allowed to call him ‘Boggins’. This reaper had come close enough that it made Bilbo’s hackles rise. There were two people allowed to call him Boggins, and they were long dead. This reaper was not one of them.

“Still, I suppose ‘Boggens’ is better than a Took. Damn things keep trying to scurry off on an unending adventure just because they ‘can’t die twice’. Fools.” The reaper scoffed, skeleton hands waving in wide gestures of annoyance. 

Well, as Frodo’s merry band of misfits would say, those were fighten’ words. But Bilbo had never been one for physical fistcuffs. No, in that way he was very much a Baggins. Why harm, when you could bewilder?

Still, a never-ending adventure. Now there was an idea!

The figure sighed. “Best get on with it then, come along Mr. Boggens. We don’t have all day.”

And oh, the things Bilbo could say. The chaos he could cause! The reaper was practically begging for it. Bingo Boggens, as if any respectable hobbit would have such a name! Bilbo hadn't been respectable in decades.

Part of him wanted to point out that this was a mistake. That there had been an error. Bilbo was meant to be getting up for breakfast and sharing tea with his nephew. He was meant to be murmuring something gentle, some poem or another, as Frodo silently relearned how to handle his cutlery. He was meant to be back there on the ship, bearing witness to the pain he had inflicted on his child.

He was meant to stand in the Pure Lands and see the poison of the shadow drain from his boy. He was meant to bear witness.

He was meant to Attone.

In retrospect, Bilbo had picked up the worst of that dwarf's habits, hadn’t he? Self-flagnation, guilt, remorse...He had learned from the best. So, perhaps he could have said something. He could have pointed out the sins he had to stand for. But he was nothing without his guilt, and Prim surely would heap more onto his shoulders.

He could have said something, but in the end, he did not. Instead, he followed along behind the reaper. Sure, there were adventures to be had and things that could be done, but Bilbo was old and he was tired. If this reaper wanted to bring him to the Garden, then that is what would happen.

And then the figure had the gall to stop and make Bilbo run face first into the reaper’s hip.

“Oh!” Exclaimed the reaper, bones rattling as it shuddered in a way that would haunt Bilbo’s nightmares. “Oh, a Took just passed!”

The reaper cast a look towards Bilbo and Bilbo did his best to appear perfectly innocent. (That look hadn’t worked on anyone that knew him since just before the Battle of the Five Armies. But the reaper didn’t know him and Bilbo was not above petty actions.)

(Petty actions and spiteful thoughts were the only reason to get up some mornings.)

“I’d best get on that. Tooks require two reapers per person, you know. And there have been rumours that the Ring Bearer, the first one, would be passing soon. Can’t miss that!” The reaper patted Bilbo condescendingly on the head and gestured towards a path that seemed to cut straight through the darkness. “You seem like a fine fellow, and you normal hobbits are just darling. Head straight down if you would, the Garden will make itself known.”

Between one blink and the next, the reaper was gone. For a moment, Bilbo could do little but stare at the empty space the reaper had been standing in. Beneath his feet was a worn path, cutting straight through a barren field of rocks and shadows. But Bilbo barely took in his surroundings.

The reaper had left him. Alone. On a path that was presumably between the various afterlifes and domains of the gods. Better yet, Bilbo had been left alone so that the reaper could go pick up Bilbo.

The irony was not lost on him.

“Do I just stay here then?” Bilbo asked the empty air, head turning to the left and then the right, as if someone was just going to pop up and explain what was going on. (In his defence, the last thing he remembered was his bed on the ship. The grit beneath his feet certainly proved he was no longer there.)

“Or should I just…” Bilbo trailed off, thumb hooked in the direction the Garden was supposed to lay.

After a moment he hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and rocked back on his heels. He was dead, he realized almost absently. His state of being (or, rather not-state-of-being) wasn't that much of a surprise. He did feel a bit bad for poor Frodo, the boy would not take his death well.

As far as he could tell, there were a few different options he could pursue. (None of which were to ‘stick around and wait for someone to figure out that there was a mistake’. No, that had flown out the window the moment the reaper had called him ‘Boggens’.)

First, he could continue on to the Garden and grovel at Prim and Drogo's feet.

Second, he could try to suss out the direction of the ocean and follow the shoreline to the Pure Lands. Once Frodo was settled in and his affairs were in order he would of course head to the Garden and enact option one.

Third, he could wander the apparent wastelands between realms as a self-inflicted punishment. He would never make it to the Gardens, never see his boy, never gain the peace Elrond and the others had always been going on about.

Fourth…

Well…

Bilbo rocked on his heels again and cast a look down the path towards the Garden. The fourth option was not something he had seriously considered. He hadn't thought of it all those years ago when Bilbo had realized he was dead. He hadn't thought of it when Frodo had gone off or Elrond had gently told him there had been smoke in Mordor and flames in the Shire. No, Bilbo hadn't thought of the fourth option until he had sat with Elrond that first night on the ship.

The Peredhel line was given the gift of choice.

Elrond would never see his daughter again.

And somewhere, deep down where even the voice hadn't been able to reach, Bilbo had realized he would never be able to see him again. He would never see him or the boys. He would never see Ori or Balin, never be able to ask them about the tunnels and their final stand.

His friends were barred from him.

Everybody knows that everybody dies. And everybody knows that only your patron god or goddess would accept you into the afterlife of your kin.

The fourth option Bilbo faced had never been more than an idle thought. A ‘what-if’, he had toyed with while he sat silently beside a grieving father and helped the elf prepare to explain the situation to his long awaited wife. What if Bilbo simply… left? What if he walked off the path and went looking for the Green Lady's husband?

Mahal had taken a risk when he created his children. Eru had not taken the transgression well, but the dwarrow had been allowed to flourish. The elven folk said that the halls of the dwarrow were hidden. That Mahal had tucked away his creations so that Eru could not see them. An ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to safety.

In all honesty, Bilbo had his own thoughts about that fact. Yavanna was married to Mahal. If the two were anything like his own parents, they would have domains near each other. If Mahal was anything like how he had been, the dwarrow were probably close at hand to their creator. (Raising Frodo had taught Bilbo many things, the first was that guilty little faunts kept their transgressions close at hand.)

(There had been more than one garden mouse or frog smuggled under Frodo's bed.)

Therefore, the likelihood of the tunnels of Mahal being near the Garden was high. The entrance was probably near a mountain, perhaps even built into the side of it like the secret door had been on the side of the Lonely Mountain. Alternatively, Bilbo could always wander close to the base of the slope, find a good patch of earth, and start to dig. He’d have to hit one of the tunnels eventually.

Hours ago, when he had laid himself down to sleep, this had not been an option he could even pursue. How could he fathom walking away from the Pure Lands or the Garden? How could he simply leave ?

But he had an eternity. He had forever and an age.

He was going on an Adventure.

He always had meant to make it back to the mountain. (Bilbo stepped off the path without looking back. There was a dwarf he had to go visit and several more he had to chastise for missing tea time.)

…***...

“Nihil.”

Nihil stopped, the impulse to immediately phase out of the receiving room almost overwhelming. “Yes, My lord?” They squeaked, mouth dry as they realized everyone was staring.

Lord Mandos loomed over the task distribution desk. It wasn't often the lord came down to the reaper's halls, instead preferring to keep a hands off approach to how his people handled their own affairs. That wasn't to say the lord wasn't involved in his domain, it was simply that he had implemented a system that organised retrieval teams for departed souls and he had little reason to interfere with an operation that was running smoothly.

“Nihil.” He repeated, eyes flashing darkly.

Nihil hadn't even been aware he knew their name. “Aye, sir?”

“You took a task this morning.” Lord Mandos boomed, nails clicking on the desk.

“Aye?” Nihil confirmed, hand scooping the soul appearance form out of their pocket.

“Read me the name on that form.” Lord Mandos demanded.

Confused, Nihil cast a glance around the room, half wondering if he was about to be demoted to wild game and insect soul retrieval for some unknown transgression. Unsurprisingly, in the face of their lord's anger, no one seemed willing to meet their eyes. Slowly, Nihil looked down at the form. The writing was still as spikey and scrunched as it had been when they took the form for the latest arrival. “Bingo Boggens?”

Lord Mandos held out a hand and Nihil quickly passed over the form. There was silence for a moment and Nihil resisted the urge to fidget. They didn’t know what had happened. There had been a hobbit and they had sent the hobbit on to the Garden and then the summons for a Took had rang out and Nihil had come running.

Lord Mandos appeared to chew on his words, his jaw clenching and popping as if he were served a dish most unappetizing.

“Bad handwriting.” Lord Mandos hissed, eyes narrowing as he looked off into the distance. “All this because of bad handwriting!”

There was an awkward silence in the hall that Nihil didn’t quite understand, although they were starting to realize this may be a problem that they had unwittingly put into motion.

“Well,” Lord Mandos said after a moment, “a Took has just been unleashed unsupervised into the lands of the Valinor. It is too much to hope that he will head towards the Garden as prompted, and to make matters worse, he is a long awaited arrival. Yavanna herself wished to greet him.”

Suddenly Nihil had a very bad feeling they knew exactly who they had left alone on a path.

“I want this Took found, and I want him found yesterday. Track him, stalk him, follow him, I don’t care how it is done. Just get the Ring Bearer to the Garden.” Lord Mandos ordered, barely paying attention to how the hall snapped into motion and reapers ran every which way. “As for you,” he looked down at Nihil, “you will come with me to explain this mess to the Green Lady.”

Chapter Text

Yavanna was not a meek goddess. She could not afford to be. Her creations, her domain, was fleeting in its prosperity and while new growth came about each year, it was only after a period of rest and decay. That was what most people forgot about her domain. She was a farmer first and foremost, heralding growth and plant life wherever she roamed. But that was not all she was.

All things died and all things decayed. Mandos was the lord of the dead and of death. He maintained the boundary and ushered the souls to the realms of their kin. Yavanna did not presume to take that away from him. She held no interest in such a task. But she was connected to his realm, far more than most seemed to think.

Everything died and everything decayed, and when the deterioration began, the organism breaking down into the most basic of parts, Yavanna would welcome the body into her domain. She would welcome the revitalization of the soil and the nutrients that fed her creations. Everything died and eventually, everything decayed. No one could avoid Mandos forever, and behind him, Yavanna worked the fields just the same.

Yavanna was not a meek goddess.

A side effect of her power, of her ability to sense growth and life, was that she could feel the stark absence just as easily. The lack of life could be jarring but there were few places in the home of the Valar that were barren. Her ability also meant that sometimes, just sometimes, she knew when a being had become a body . (She didn't like to feel the flickers, to sense when a soul left and a body began to decay. The process was part of the cycle, she knew that, but the knowledge did not stop her from mourning the transition of life to death.) There were few souls she had ‘tagged’, far too few souls that she kept an eye on and waited to see how their path progressed.

The ring bearer, the elder one, was one such soul. Bilbo Baggins had been one of her creations she had held dear to her heart. Mahal, her husband, in his quest to produce a creation to help populate Arda, had spun a gift into each of his children. Somewhere in Arda, he had promised the dwarrow, was One just for them. His gift was nothing as silly as splitting one soul into splinters and waiting for the splinters to come back together. No, he had not made his children as souls less than whole. But he gave them a match, a potential to connect and grow with another soul.

Yavanna pretended to be ignorant about the whole situation. She pretended she did not know Mahal had refused to allow his children to be lonely. She pretended she did not know that he snuck a touch of her soil and a sip of nectar to seep into some of his children. She pretended she did not know. But if there were some hobbits that had more stone in their garden and metal in their spines, then that was for her to know, and her husband to be delighted over when his children managed to hold out a hand towards his stepchildren.

Bilbo Baggins had been one of the few hobbits she had blessed with stone from her husband's workshop in recent history. The stone had not been a guarantee. There had been no promise that Bilbo would follow the whispering call of the mountain or that he would meet a dwarf blessed with soil and nectar. But the stone had created a chance. In the end, a chance had been all Bilbo had needed.

And then… Well… Everything eventually died and everything eventually decayed. Up to, and including, Thorin Oakenshield.

Death had never waited for chances and ‘what-ifs’. No matter how much Yavanna had wished for decay to halt and wait, to allow a few more years before new life was given to the fields. Everything and everyone would come to her fields eventually, what was a few more months to an eternity?

“My lady.” The call came from further down the field of wildflowers and carefully cultivated berry bushes.

Yavanna turned towards the call, a sickle in one hand and a blackberry rolling between her fingers. There would be a fair yield this season, far better then there had been the year before. Although, it did appear that she would need to cull a few branches and split a bush or two before it choked out all other growth from the surrounding soil.

“Yes, Forsythia?” Yavanna asked as she tucked the sickle into her belt.

The entwife gave her what would have been a smile had it been on a human face. Unlike the Entmen who had the appearance of trees given legs and arms, Forsythia and her kinswomen were made of twisting vines and carefully bent branches. Depending on the forests Yavanna had tasked them to shepherd depended on their more detailed appearances, and Forsythia had been the warden of willows and elms in her life. Which showed in the pussywillows she had carefully crafted to mimic the hair and braids of her Ardaian fellows.

“Ma’am, Salix and her crew have found an overburdened grove that appears to have been left to fallow. There also appears to have been some cross-pollination that has changed the fruit and new growth. They wish for you to view the area before they attempt to shepherd the growth into a recognizable orchard.” Forsythia said, a limb reaching up in an absent wave towards the aforementioned grove.

Before Yavanna could reply, there was a small squeak and Yavanna could only smile as a little form of twisted roots and bark peered out from beneath Forsythia’s braid branches. The entling was a tiny thing, not yet grown enough to hold the leaves of their kinsmen in their form. Instead, the little entling appeared more like a doll made of twigs, all tiny limbed and overlooked features.

(Yavanna had always thought the entlings were sweet and adorable. When they had first arrived in her fields, ushered in by a sympathetic Mandos, she had raged. The groves she had meticulously kept were torn asunder in her anger and too many places in the Valar had been left to fallow when she had finally calmed down. In the end, she had every entwife and all their children.)

(Her Ents would never know what had happened to their lovers and their children. Some would never even know they had become fathers. Everything died and everything decayed, but this had felt especially cruel.)

Smiling softly, Yavanna held out the blackberry towards the child. Forsythia tilted her head back and pressed her lips together, barely containing her mirth as the child squealed and chittered. The baby was not at an age to speak in a tongue Ardaians could understand, but Yavanna was no Ardaian.

She understood the child just as well as their mother.

The child scuttled out from their hiding place, little vines and branches twisting around the twigs of their mother’s hair in an absent form of comfort. Carefully and ever so gently, the child flowed down their mother’s arm and reached out towards the blackberry. Yavanna bit her lip to stop from laughing as the child hoisted the berry over their head and did a victory dance, nearly toppling over as they did. The blackberry was as large as the child’s head.

“What do we say, seedling?” Forsythia asked as the child scrambled up to their hiding place with their treat.

The child skidded to a halt, the blackberry clutched close to their trunk as they turned back towards Yavanna with wide eyes.

“Oh go on then.” Yavanna cooed, fingers wiggling in a little wave the child attempted to mimic. “They’ve done no harm.”

“You spoil them.” Forsythia drawled as the child hid behind her braids and vines.

Yavanna hummed as she turned towards the grove Salix had decided to tackle, one hand beckoning the ent forward to walk beside her. “I rather think they’ve earned it, don’t you?”

Forsythia sighed, the sound very much like wind blowing harshly through boughs and branches. “I suppose. Although, If you listen to Rafflesia then you’d think the seedlings were all terrible listeners and needed far more discipline.”

“Rafflesia exaggerates and works in the delicate fields for a reason. You know she has a hard time with the seedlings and their enthusiasm.” Yavanna consoled even as her nose twisted up in annoyance. Rafflesia was one of the older entwives, born in a field of flowers, she mostly tended moss and smaller shrubs that the larger oaks and trees couldn’t reach without damaging the plants. She was also a tiny shrub of an ent and could be mistaken for an entlingif one didn’t see the flowers threaded through her branches.

“Aye, but it does not make speaking to her any easier.” Forsythia complained, her braids twitching with her annoyance.

Yavanna hummed, but nodded all the same as the ent continued to groan about her various kinswomen. For the most part, the complaints were general things, little habits and actions that annoyed each other as they worked in close proximity. She had no doubt that the ents could sort issues out between themselves, but she liked to keep a finger on the pulse of the gossip. 

The Ents would always be her failure, her own personal tragedy. She had created them to be long lived, to shepard the forests and guide the flora and fauna with care and zest. She had thought they’d be as long lived as the elves. She had not expected the attack. She had not thought her creations would burn and be torn asunder as their forests were plundered and culled. 

She had built them to be long lived, and as such, Yavanna had not created a haven for their souls. (Foolishly, she had not thought she would need one so soon. Her ents were meant to guide and protect. She had thought the children of her fellows would respect her domain.)

(She had been wrong.)

In the end, her lack of foresight had left the Ents in Mandos’ halls until she had begged and pleaded for her elder children to be brought to work her fields as they had done in Arda during their life. (The ents could not be returned to their forests. They could not be reunited with their lovers. They would be in her fields for an eternity, until the last forest fell and the last plant decayed. So Eru had spoken.)

(And so, Yavanna stayed with her shepherds and entlings. She had stayed.)

(That did not mean she would allow the tragedy to happen again.)

…***...

Yavanna was in a field when it happened. Salix and her crew were dutifully documenting the new growth of the grove and attempting to recreate the cross-breeding. If all went well, this flock of trees could be released into Arda within the century.

Her feet were half buried in the soft loom and her elbows were on her knees as she ran a hand through the golden wild wheat. A small part of her, one that was centuries and aeons old, wanted to pluck the wheat from the earth and fashion out a crown for her husband. Gold was his favourite colour and even after all this time, she liked to find things that related to his likes. She wanted to see his smile, to hear his laugh, to watch as his clever hands roamed over the intricacies of whatever item she had found. He had always found such delight in whatever Yavanna had discovered on her journeys. Even if he didn’t understand it. 

But this was wheat and she knew he wouldn't understand why she would make a mockery of a crown from flora meant for eating. Just as she didn't understand the difference between gold and fool's gold. They both sparkled just the same, why was one more foolish than the other? His lack of understanding was not his fault as much as it was his due to his nature. Just as she too was bound to her nature.

She wanted to fashion him a festival crown in the ways of her children, but he would not appreciate the meaning of such an action. He would accept the crown, of course, there was no point in thinking otherwise. But he would have little more than a rumbled sort of amusement before he would carelessly put the crown aside and return to his work. Leaving the poor thing to fall into a crevice in the workshop and deteriorate into dust.

She had made him a crown before and knew the process by heart.

So no, Yavnna would not make him a crown. But her fingers twisted through the wheat and she thought about what she could do instead. She could take a few grains to grind and bake into a small loaf of bread. Which of course meant food, and that was better than any crown according to her husband.

And then the wheat stalk in her hand crumbled.

Unlike what some people thought, her fields were not attuned to her creations. She could not walk out into the meadows and plantations and divine the movements of Arda. There was no metaphor or symbolism in what was planted and a season of plentiful yields in her gardens and fields had no impact on the yield in Arda.

So when the grain slipped through her fingers and rolled across the soil, Yavanna should not have put any stock into it. Maybe she had absently fiddled with the stalk. Maybe there was a rot in the plant she had not noticed.

Maybe…

(She could rationalise it all she wanted. The grain had fallen through her fingers and it was now mudied on the ground.)

There was no reason to jump to conclusions. There was no reason for Yavanna to push herself to her feet, her hand dropping down to the sickle hung from her belt. There was no reason at all for Yavanna to look at the wheat and think of anything but gold and flour.

There was no reason for Yavanna to think of her ents and tragedy. But the wild wheat began to sway as unease grew in her heart and Yavanna knew.

She knew.

“He is dead then.” Yavanna called, her gaze sweeping out across the rippling wheat and coming to a stop on the two figures who had come to a stop in the waist high grass that spanned along the edge of the forest.

She had no reason to think of the disquiet among the valar and even little reason to think of the boats carrying the last of Eru’s eldest children. She had no reason to think of her little hobbit being carried on those same ships, to the shores of Eru’s haven. She had no reason to think of that at all and yet…

Mandos swept closer, his dark clothes stark against the foliage.

Yavanna refused to look away. She would not cry. She would not choke. She would not scream or throw a tantrum. Death came for everyone and her Garden was as peaceful as one could get. She had learned from her failure with the Ents. She had learned and grown a Garden for her creations long before they had even stepped foot in Arda. She had learned and her hobbits had been safe in the boundary of their haven.

Eru had said the ring bearers would be given an honour. They would be allowed to settle in his Pure Lands, in the haven of the elves, and they would want for nothing. Eru had been firm and Yavanna had not been able to make him listen.

What honour was there when Eru would curse two of her children to be separated from their loved ones for all eternity? He would not allow the ring bearers to leave the borders of his haven and Yavanna was unable to open the gates of her Garden by the same order. Two of her children were forever out of her reach and Eru called it a gift.

Someday, someone else would notice the issue. They would notice that the hobbits had healed from the malice and the tragedy. They would notice that the hobbits had gotten better, but had not thrived. And by that point, Eru would not reverse his decision. He would not take back his offer, his curse. To do so would undermine his authority, and would prove his fallibility.

Yavanna had tried. She had tried so hard. But nobody had listened.

(Somebody had to do something.)

“My lady.” Lord Mandos stepped beside her, coming to a stop just a step shy from standing in her direct line of sight. At his side was one of his reapers. Yavanna had met her fair share of his crew, but this one seemed a bit younger then the rest. This one kept their head down and even with the unease in her heart and trembling in her hands, Yavanna could not help but grin at how the little reaper swept a hand across the wheat. Far too many of her fellows’ children had never seen an open field or danced through the trees and the flowers, and it showed.

For a moment, Mandos and Yavanna shared a look, one of bemusement and concern. For a moment, the two of them could ignore the reason Mandos had left his halls and Yavanna could silently coo and tease him for the fragile awe that was plastered to the little reaper’s face.

“Nihil.” Mandos coughed after a moment, his hand coming up to nudge the reaper’s shoulder.

The poor thing jumped, nearly clearing the wheat and frantically dipped down into apologies and stuttered explanations. Which would have been cute if the poor dear wasn’t positively terrified.

(In the corner of the field, Yavanna could see an entling slip away into the trees. She could see Forsythia’s twisted limbs curl back into the foliage and the ents of shrubs and flowers scuttle through the undergrowth. She could see eyes in the shadows and hear the gentle mutters of concern and discontent.)

One of her children had died and the little reaper was far too frightened for this whole issue to be natural.

(She was not the only one put off by the little reaper’s terror.)

Yavanna’s hand slipped back down to her sickle, eyes pinned on the form of the deity across from her. There was fear and then there was this, and Yavanna had had enough of that type of terror to last her an eternity.

Mandos grimaced. Good. Yavanna was not happy and children should never be terrified of their parents, let alone their father. If she had to, Yavanna would simply steal the reaper away, perhaps give them a job of gathering the essence of departed plants and microfauna. That would keep them busy and keep Eru off her back.

To her surprise, Mandos put his hand back onto the reaper’s shoulder and the little being calmed and relaxed into the hand instantly, apologies and stutters trailing off into silence.

Mandos turned back to Yavanna. “A hobbit has died. The elder ring bearer.”

The figure beside Mandos did not lift their head, in some ways, Yavanna was grateful. At least one person would not see the devastation that was surely making its way across her face. Slowly, she tilted her head down and ran her fingers through the wheat again, absently plucking a piece from the ground and rolling it between her fingers.

“Bilbo Baggins.” Yavanna breathed.

(She could not show the relief that had spread through her at those words. She could not let Mandos see her glee or her hope. He would not be allowed to know what she had done.)

(What she was going to do.)

At least there would be one. At least there was a chance that one of her boys would make it to the Garden and spend his eternity with family and friends. At least one of her babies would be saved from Eru’s curse.

“We lost him on route to the Garden.” Mandos continued, a hand coming up to grip her shoulder in a move that should have been comforting. “But we will find him again and he will be escorted to his reward.”

Behind Mandos and his companion, the forest shuddered and the leaves fluttered in a nonexistent breeze. Yavanna had always been forced to keep a firm grip on her emotions, lest her anger tear apart the very domain she created. The last time her temper had run away on her was when her ents had come back to the fields.

This time, when her frustration and anger mounted, the trees alerted the only other ones who would listen. This time, the ents crawled to the treeline, limbs, branches, and vines sneaking out into the undergrowth of the field. This time, when Mandos offered his condolences, there was more than just her temper to fear.

Out of the corner of her eye, Yavanna could see some of the older seedlings rush through the wheat and scamper through the dirt with sharpened sticks and pointed teeth. Further back, she could see grass sway and flatten, large roots darting out of the ground and threading back into the earth, weaving over each other until there was a web hidden beneath the soil.

Mandos looked at her beseechingly. “Yavanna please, don’t make that face. Your child will be found.”

A root slipped out of the soil, the jagged point spiralling up into the air behind the god and his companion. Her ents had learned well, for all that they had learned these techniques after death. They had been far from defenceless in life, but they had proved to be no match against the creatures that had dared to burn them down.

An eternity in the fields had taught the ents to push their limits, to twist and grow as they had not in Ardaian soil. And in the end, that meant they had learned from the very thing that had sent them to the fields. They had learned about war.

(Sometimes, the only way to relieve yourself of a fear, was to conquer it. And Yavanna’s ents had little else to do but conquer.)

The root hovered overhead, trembling with anticipation as Mandos leaned forward. “There was an error.”

The root heaved back, the jagged end twitching and jerking as Mandos leaned further into the goddess’ space. “We had forgotten Master Baggins was a Took, and even worse, had mis-read his name.”

(In another time, another place, where Baggins’ wasn’t one of hers and there was nothing at stake but a bit of chaos in a filing room, Yavanna might have smiled. She might have jut her elbow into Mandos’ gut and laughed as he sputtered and flushed. In another time, she might have teased him.)

(In another time, she might have admitted what she had done.)

(She had thought they’d lose him on route to the Pure Lands and bring him to the Garden. Not that they would lose him on the way to the Garden and offer to take him to the Pure Lands.)

“You will tell Eru.” Yavanna said, half turned away and mind racing miles ahead. Her hand striking down in front of her as a signal to her ents. “And you will not start the meeting until I have arrived.”

The grimace that crossed Mandos’ face was as fierce as it was resigned. Nobody liked to explain to Eru what they had done, not after the wrath Eru had brought down on her husband for interfering in his plans.

Behind them, the root sank back into the ground, hidden but not forgotten.

“And where are you going?” Mandos asked after he gave a sharp bow to her orders.

Nobody liked to cross Eru, but Yavanna had learned something from watching her husband. Eru could have factored in the drums of the dwarrow, had potentially even made space for them in the song of the world, but Mahal had been too hasty. Her husband had been too greedy. Instead of pulling threads of other scores, instead of embellishing and boosting other notes, he had made something that grated and shrieked when combined with the existing threads. Yavanna had been smart when she weaved her children into the song, having them echo the existing chords and only begin to stand out when they had been entangled in the song for too long to be easily removed.

Yavanna had learned not to ask permission, but to act. And that made all the difference.

In the beginning, Yavanna had hoped that her two lost children would be Took enough to slip away to the Garden, to cross into her gates and hide in the smials and clans that populated it. She had thought to make them disappear into eternity. Yavanna was not a meek goddess but she could pretend to be.

(Her ents would not be reunited until the last plant fell into rot. Her hobbits would not suffer for a mistake that was not their own. They would not suffer for a ring that had been destroyed and a curse that was not theirs to shoulder. Her children would not suffer. Yavanna would make it so.)

In the beginning, Yavanna had thought her children would have more time before discovery, but Mandos ran a tight ship. She had been left in awe at his workmanship and how efficient his people did their work. Of course, no one thought about who brought in the lovely flowers every week. No, nobody thought anything of her as she wandered through the halls, a familiar enough face not to raise suspicion.

Nobody thought anything of flowers, even when they were placed on the distribution desk.

(She was grateful Mandos did not recognize the handwriting.)

But now there was an opportunity. Bilbo had not gone to the Gardens as she had thought he might, nor did he clear up the misunderstanding and request to be brought back to the ship where his nephew lay. Instead, he had done something she had not dared to hope.

He had left.

And Yavanna had an idea where her steel-spined son might go. (Had the positions been reversed, she rather thought her soil and nectar touched step-son would have done the same thing. Child like parent, she thought a bit ruefully. If one’s heart was not in the field, then it was probably in the workshop.)

Yavanna turned her head, careful to ensure Mandos did not see the twisted glee that darted across her face. All she had to do was buy her son some time. If they could set a precedent, if they could sneak a soul into another haven before anyone told the soul the rules…

“I!” Yavanna sang, her voice high and clear, reaching out even the ents in the forest. “Am going to the Garden. Somebody must tell the poor boy’s mother!”

And oh, wasn’t the fear that crossed Mandos’ face exquisite ?

Chapter Text

The land was silent near Mahal's workshop. Carefully tucked away into deep caverns and a maze of tunnels, Mahal worked at his forge and puttered around his workshop. Yavanna had not seen the entirety of his domain. Like her fields, it had grown and twisted since their conception, and that meant the only one who might have an idea of the whole of it, was Mahal himself.

Yavanna did not envy him. Sunlight only reached the top most rooms and the further one wandered, the darker the caves became. Her husband did have a lighting system, had installed it after she had whacked her shins off his worktables one too many times. But the caverns were immense and Yavanna had long since given up trying to navigate them herself, even with the lanterns and a crudely drawn map.

There was also the fact that Yavanna was certain Mahal kept the caverns dark and uninviting for a reason. Officially, Eru had not given leave for the souls of the dwarrow to continue to exist after their deaths. Officially, Mahal had not made a haven. And technically Mandos had not been given orders to disregard dwarrow souls. Which meant that below the darkness and the expanding workshop, far below the tunnels and the scrap heaps Mahal swore he would one day dispose of, there might have been something.

Officially, Yavanna did not know what happened to her stepchildren. Officially, she did not know why her husband had built far too many chimneys and stacks into the mountain. Officially, there was nothing to wonder about.

(Realistically, there was only one option for where her stepchildren had been hidden away.)

Still, the land was silent, or as near silent as a mountain covered in lichen and scraggly grasses could be, and it always made her teeth ache. She'd swallow the feeling and pretend that her husband's domain didn't make her want to climb the walls. She loved him and he loved her, and that meant they met in the middle. It was rare for her to come to the shop. (Mahal didn't come to her fields either, unless he was fitting some part for a piece of equipment. He said the wide open spaces made his skin crawl.) Instead, the two of them came together in-between their domains.

They had a house, a cabin really, that sat in a valley in the mountain. Mahal had carved out a garden for her and she had worked in stone benches and metal wrought fences. Their domains mixed together and settled into something utterly domestic.

She wanted to be there, in their cabin. She wanted to be there, sitting on the bench and spinning fibres, watching in amusement as her husband fiddled with a handful of metal. He would be attempting to mimic her motions with material that did not want to bend, and inevitably Mahal would throw the project down into his basket and turn instead to a soapstone carving. She had a dozen or so that graced her mantle and every few decades, Mahal would rearrange them and display new things.

(Sometimes her entlings were given gifts. Not often, as they mostly preferred to play with sticks and the various things found in her forests. Other times, she saw a basket filled with childish toys and she would turn her eyes away as he scurried to his workshop to ‘dispose’ of them.)

She wanted to be at the cabin.

Instead, here she was at the workshop.

Yavanna was lucky and Mahal was in the front room of the workshop. This wasn't unusual, some days the god barely made it over the threshold before he was raking chalk across slate and pens over parchment as he toyed with some idea or another. Still, Yavanna couldn't help but lean against the entrance and watch as he gently manipulated a thin wire around a jig. For all his faults, Mahal could be gentle and Yavanna watched with a warm fondness.

The scene couldn't last. Yavanna had too much at stake. She had put out too many bets and the chips were not falling as she had expected. She had to do damage control. She had to delay Eru, speak to her children, hide away evidence of her interference, and far too many other things she could barely parse fast enough to list.

The scene wouldn't last, but Yavanna would savour it for as long as she could.

If this went poorly. If Eru made good on the threats he had declared when her husband had released his children into Arda… Well. Mahal would never forgive her. There would be no more quiet evenings in their cabin. There would be no more soot stained fingerprints on the walls or soapstone carvings on the mantle. There would be no more tools in the garden or scrapheap scarecrows in the fields. Mahal would never forgive her and she could not blame him.

Their union had been one filled with compromise and Yavanna found this was the one thing she could compromise on no longer. (The stakes were high but the reward was higher. They could do it, Yavanna would see to it.) Still…

Striding into the workshop, Yavanna wrapped her arms around her husband and sank her face into the crown of his head. He had yet to fall into any strenuous work, which meant he still carried the faint scent of their bed, their home, instead of stinking of oil and the forge. Letting herself fall into the comfort of the scent of home, Yavanna reached one hand up to tangle her fingers around their marriage braid.

“I have done something foolish.” She whispered, her voice near trembling.

Against her arms, Yavanna could feel her husband’s calloused hands begin to stroke a somewhat soothing motion. “We'll figure it out together.” He said.

There was a tightness in her throat. How sweet of her husband to immediately turn and offer support. No questions, no demands, just immediate support. (She didn’t deserve it, not for what she had done. Not for the threat she heralded upon her husband’s door.) She had done the same for him once, back when the world had been young and her husband had wanted children so badly. (Children she had not been able to give him. Not ones made from his domain.)

She had stood beside him then.

“Not this time, my Oak.” Yavanna croaked, wincing slightly as her voice broke. “Not this time.”

This time, she would bring the wrath down upon her own head. If things went poorly, if she had gambled with the wrong hand and misread the signs, then it would be her domain that suffered. (She would guarantee it. Eru would have no reason to look through Mahal’s workshop. Not this time.)

“Amralime?” Mahal demanded an answer as he wrenched himself free of her grasp and spun around to see her face to face. “Amralime, what have you done?”

Yavanna was already backing up and passing through the threshold. If he caught her, if he reached out and grabbed her hand, she would never leave. She’d sit and cry. She’d let out all the anger and the frustration that had piled up over the centuries and let it loose in a domain that would not react to her emotions in the same violence of her fields.

She’d break into a million tiny pieces and not even her husband with his clever mind and steady hands would be able to piece her back together. (How long had she watched as her children were separated by a decree that had never been fair? How long had she stood by and watched as Mandos sorted souls and tore apart families that were split by domains and patrons? How long had she listened to her adventurous children cry and bemoan the locked gates?)

(How long had her stepchildren been forced to live in halls beneath her husband’s workshop, hidden by a thin veneer of adopted ignorance?)

 “A Took is loose.” She warned, somewhat vindicated by the way Mahal’s face became wane and pale. He understood the severity of that statement. One Took was equal to all the drama of a family of Durinsons if primed correctly. Silent and daring, the souls of the Tooks had become even worse than their living counterparts. Afterall, you could not die twice. (Or at least, not without a very specific set of circumstances.)

“Eru will send out a call.” Yavanna warned as she stepped closer to her own domain. “He will have no choice, I have sent Mandos to his halls, and I have no plans in letting this matter be swept aside.”

The last thing she saw before she slipped away from the entrance was a sickening sort of understanding pass over Mahal’s face.

If Yavanna could not play her cards right, if she could not end with the opening of domains and halls…

If Eru decided to clean the slate Mahal had tarnished…

(He would never forgive her for this, she knew that from the moment she had set down a vase of flowers on an empty desk all those months ago.)

…***...

Bilbo was not hungry. He was not tired. He wasn’t even in pain. When the reaper had arrived and the truth had become apparent, he had somewhat known he was dead. He had known that he died. But there was knowing, and there was understanding.

The lack of pain had been what clued him in. The lack of hunger was what made the fact real. By his estimate, Bilbo had been dead for about four hours, maybe even six? Which would have put him solidly into lunchtime. But he had missed breakfast, second breakfast, and elevenises. His stomach should have been growling and snarling loud enough to be mistaken for a disgruntled badger. But he wasn't hungry. He wasn’t even thirsty.

He was dead and there was no need for such mortal chains.

Part of him wanted to sit down, to fall upon the dust and the dirt and stare off into the distance until the world ended and the skies burned into oblivion. And he could do that now. He had all the time in the world and no need to wander for food. Perhaps he wouldn’t even need to stop for sleep. He could sit there, buried in horror and awe, stuck in his own thoughts until there was nothing to do but bear witness to eternity.

But those were such mauldin thoughts and Bilbo was nothing if not a liar. All storytellers were, you see, and Bilbo knew himself better than that. He had written a book, sanitised all the bits that had made him want to weep and scream. He had riddled a dragon and snuck through the dungeons of an elf. He was Bilbo Baggins, and that meant something, even in death.

Bilbo was dead and therefore, he did not feel the constraints of his mortal body. (Here was a terrifying thought, if he did choose to sit down and lose himself in the passing of an eternity, would he notice? Or would the hours, days, weeks, aeons, blend together until there was nothing but the movement of his breaths?) He misses it, Bilbo concluded in a rush. He missed the routine of mortality.

(Eternity was wasted on the dead.)

It should not have been surprising then, that he still managed to become annoyed. He had an eternity to look forward to, and he still was tripped up over petty grievances. Although, to be fair, this might not be considered ‘petty’ due to the fact that he was hung upside down from a rather sturdy tree branch. To add insult to injury, the snare was around both his feet, not just one, and his jacket had managed to flip down (up?) over his head and tangle around his arms. Meaning that even if he had been strong enough to bend upright towards his ankles, he wouldn't be able to attack the knots.

Somebody in the Garden was laughing at him for falling for this trick, he just knew it. Mad Baggins, the eldest hobbit to ever live, had managed to fall for a bunny trap in the woods. The shame of it all. (Frodo, the lovely boy, would have been howling with laughter and Bilbo might have enjoyed it then. He might have been able to push down the heat in his cheeks and the tension around his spine, if only for the joy it would have brought his son.)

But there was no Frodo here and Bilbo was in the inbetween of the Valar. He had wandered off the path and strode into the forests. The forests could not have been the Garden, so Bilbo was sure he was at least heading in the right direction away from the Garden Gates. What he had been trying to do was find a mountain. What he had forgotten was that when one was in a forest, there was little to see but trees. Which meant he either needed to climb a tree like he had back in Mirkwood or he needed to leave the forest altogether.

Which he had been trying to do before the damn snare!

Perhaps ‘annoyance’ was too tame of a word to encapture the situation.

Beneath him, there came a squeak, and Bilbo looked down to see a gaggle of stick people. The little face made of wood and twisting twigs blinked up at him and for a moment, Bilbo could do little but stare. He had seen stone giants, had met trolls and orcs, had even dealt with a dragon. Once, he had thought there would be little that could surprise him anymore, especially after that damned ring. 

But this?

This was new.

It also brought into perspective why the dwarrow insisted on being buried with a weapon. Honestly, for all their hard headedness and stupidity, the dwarrow might have been onto something. It was becoming far too likely that Bilbo would be attacked in the afterlife, he had already been snared in a bunny trap!

Squinting at the little figures, Bilbo quickly put two and two together. Frodo had called them Ents when he had told his story. (The boy was no liar, not even to himself. His story had been gritty and filled with pain, with none of the wonder Bilbo had woven into his own tale. But perhaps that was due to the audience. Bilbo had needed to tell the story to himself and to the faunts. Frodo had told it to his wizened uncle who needed no protection from blood and death.)

Bilbo had heard of the ents of course. He had known of the Green Lady's shepherds, but he had never expected to see one! In all honesty he had been rather envious of Merry and Pippin when he had heard of the Ents and their march. To meet their older siblings, the Green Lady's eldest children! Bilbo would have had a heart attack on the spot!

But these ents were tiny. Bilbo had seen larger pumpkins! Which really wasn't a fair comparison considering how large some of those pumpkins could grow. But then again, ents were said to be towering figures even by manish standards. And these ones were only large if one compared them to a doormouse.

If age were based on height, then Bilbo was probably looking at… Oh. (It was one thing to acknowledge your own death. To be aware that the reaper had come for you and that the Garden was waiting just up the path. It was another to know that there were children who had passed as well. Even children that were not of his race, for all that they were his siblings in patronage.)

His annoyance softened into something far warmer. “Hello little seedlings.” Bilbo crooned in the same manner he had once offered to Frodo in the wake of soaked cloaks and the closing of an estate. “Aren’t you brave, capturing a hobbit far out in your woods!”

A few of the entlings scattered, twigs bristling and shaking as they dived into crevices in the roots below. Yet, a handful remained, little flowers blooming nervously on twisted vines and lashing branches. There was a chatter that passed between the brave little creatures. A high pitched series of creaks and groans that made Bilbo's ears itch the longer the entlings debated their apparent bravery and hostage.

It was hard to be mad at children, even harder to be mad at children that were in the Valar. But the blood rushing up to Bilbo's head was beginning to make him dizzy and the longer he swayed from the snare, the more he wondered if this was going to be his eternity. Captured by entlings and bound to a tree.

“Oh!”

The sudden exclamation came from behind Bilbo and he wasn't sure who jumped higher. Him, or the entlings. Regardless, the chatter picked up in speed and intensity, and Bilbo found himself flailing about as the entlings suddenly bolted towards the newcomer.

“Yes, yes. I see you brave fellows captured the poor thing.” The voice was a smooth rumble, none of the pitchy tones of the children cutting through the woman's words. “Best let him down, don't you think?”

Twisting around, Bilbo had just enough time to see a grown entwife gesture towards the snare before he was plummeting towards the ground. Heart in his mouth, Bilbo threw his hands up to wrap around his head when he suddenly saw a net of vines and soft flowers flash beneath him and catch him a few feet from the ground.

“Seedlings!” The ent scolded, the net slowly lowering Bilbo to the ground and setting him gently on his feet, before unfolding and waving about in a mimicry of arms and ‘tsking’ hands. “That could have hurt the poor dear!” There was some chatter then… “It doesn’t matter he ‘can’t die twice’. Pain is pain!”

There was some more chatter and Bilbo could only watch in fascination as the entwife scolded the children. After a few minutes, most of which Bilbo spent shuffling in place as if he were a faunt caught in farmer Maggots’ field, the entwife sighed and waved her arms about in a ‘shooing’ motion. The seedlings bolted into the undergrowth and Bilbo had the absurd need to break down into laughter. Children were children it seemed, no matter the species. 

Biting down the chuckles that bubbled in his throat, BIlbo gave the entwife the best smile he could drag up under the circumstances. This was going to be it, wasn’t it? This was going to be the end of his run. He was going to be put in Garden and locked away. He was going to be separated from his son, from his family, from the people he had grown to love as much as his kin. This was it, and the only one he could blame was himself.

(What hobbit was caught in snares and dragged up into the air? What hobbit was overrun in the forest, the domain of the Green Lady? What hobbit was caught by entlings?)

(Bilbo had grown soft in his old age. In death, he had become careless.)

The entwife stared at him for a long moment, her braids of vines and pussywillows shifting and curling in the mimicry of elven styles. “It has been a long time since I have seen a hobbit.” The entwife crooned, her body twisting and shuddering as she slipped forward to stand before him.

Bilbo could do little but shrug, hands held up in supplication. “I’ve never seen an ent.” He admitted, helpless to anything but look at the figure and try to match the sight to the story Frodo had told him in dribs and drabs. (The story had come second hand from Merry and Pippin, but Frodo had needed to tell a story, and Bilbo had always been willing to sit and listen)

(Even if the stories weren’t entirely true. )

“Forsythia.” The ent said, her braided branches and vines curling in a nonexistent wind. “I am Forsythia, so named for the grove I was given to herd.”

“That is a pretty name.” Bilbo said in reflex, his teeth biting down on his tongue as he fought the urge to offer up his own name in response. (A fugitive did not need to make things easy, even when caught red handed. Two dwarrow boys and a thief had taught him that much during his travels.)

The bark and branches that made up Forsythia’s face twisted into something that might have been amusement, or perhaps even astonishment had she been a hobbit. As it stood, Bilbo was willing to place her thoughts as somewhere between the two.

“I,” the ent began, vines shivering and curling around her face and down her back, “do not think I need your name.”

Bilbo had a moment of panic, his breath catching in his throat and his gaze darting to the undergrowth as if he would be able to outrun an ent of all things.

“Bingo Boggens.” Forsythia stated, flowers blooming around her head like a blush. “I do believe you were meant to be…” there was a pause and Bilbo had the most confusing moment of being appalled the ent knew that name, and relief that she obviously knew to use it at all.

“Travelling. To a mountain perhaps?” The ent continued, head already turning away as a low chitter swept up from the hidden audience of seedlings. “Now, what flowers would you bring to a dwarf?” Forsythia asked, head turning towards the wild flowers Bilbo could see growing in the undergrowth and off the main path through the forest.

(Years ago, Bilbo had been in a garden. Giant bees had been buzzing overhead and Bilbo had been elbow deep in the vegetable patch. Beorn had been kind enough to let them stay for a few more nights as Thorin's ribs healed and Bilbo was going to ensure their host's hospitality was repaid in kind. Even if that meant he had to weed the beds himself!)

(As the sun crested overhead and the heat began to press heavy on his shoulders and squeeze at his lungs, Bilbo decided it was time to take a break. Leaning back on his haunches, he scanned the pile of refuse and groaned as he hauled himself up to his feet. Turning to head inside, Bilbo's gaze caught on the three figures under the old oak tree. There sat Thorin and his nephews, the two boys had their heads bowed together and their uncle slowly ran his fingers over something Bilbo couldn't make out. There was something striking about the scene, almost sacred in its gentleness. An oak passing on wisdom to the settling acorns.)

(Years later, Bilbo would omit that scene from his stories. He would brush over the gentleness and the moments of peace and quiet. He would turn away from the innocence on Merry and Pippin’s faces and he would instead speak of wild honey and seed cakes.)

(There had been no need to see ghosts in the corners of children’s smiles. Not when there had been recipes to share and food to compliment.)

Without thinking, Bilbo blurted out “Oak.”

Forsythia didn't even pause. “That is not a flower.”

“Alright.” Bilbo reported, desperate to think of something, anything, that wasn’t bloodied lips and cracked ice. “Flour.”

(His hands had been sticky with honey and the dwarf’s cracked lips had brushed against his thumb as his teeth pulled the small cake from Bilbo’s offered hand. In the Shire, such an act would have been scandalous. Hidden in Beorn’s garden, Bilbo had instead offered up another cake and pretended such actions were not so forward. )

(All storytellers were liars, and Bilbo had been lying for years. )

“Yes, but what kind ?” Forsythia stressed as her fingers of twigs reached down to brush against the petals of something off white and small.

Bilbo blinked, head turning towards the little stalks of wild grains he had kept seeing throughout the forest. Slowly, he gestured towards one such cluster. “No, like, food. Bread. Dwarrow as rule, aren't big on flowers.”

(Thorin had sat under an oak tree and told stories of ores and stones to the pebbles he had raised. He wouldn’t have known what Bilbo had been doing when he offered honey cakes and crowns of oak and wildflowers.)

(Thorin had never been crowned under his mountain, but Bilbo had held onto the knowledge that he had been crowned with strength and gratitude under a tree that bore his namesake. And Bilbo had carried the acorn from that crown with him until the day he had died. )

The ent paused, and Bilbo could almost see the idea turning over inside her head. “Ah.” Forsythia said after a moment, her vines and branches twisting out towards the wild wheat and grains. “That does explain much.”

Bilbo's eyebrows had nearly escaped into his hairline by this point, but he found himself hesitant to ask for any sort of explanation. “Right. So, I'll be on my way?”

Because ‘Bingo Boggens’ or not, there was no need to stick around and wait for a reaper to show up to haul him back onto the path.

The ent practically spun on him, vines suddenly shooting out to grab him about the wrist and drag him over to the wheat she had pulled and begun to bundle. “Oh no! No, no, no! You cannot leave yet!”

Surprised by the force and a bit startled by the sheer volume Forsythia could reach, Bilbo didn't fight the ent as she shoved the bundle into his open palm. “You must bring this to the Lord Husband of our Lady! Yes! Yes! You cannot search for a way to leave the Valar, no you must bring this to the Lord!”

Bilbo couldn't help but blink down at the bundle. In all, it was a small thing, hardly enough yield for anything larger than a palm loaf. Even then, Bilbo wasn't sure what would be salvageable after he sifted and crushed the wheat. Not that the wheat looked bad per say, but Bilbo hadn't had to make his own flour in decades. He wasn't sure he still had the eye or the touch for it.

He had always had more of a touch for the vegetables and smaller flowers. Grains were best left to the miller, Bilbo had thought. There was no need to step on anyone's toes when there was a perfectly good mill just outside the farthling.

“Am I… To bake something?” Bilbo asked in bewilderment. Sure, he could probably coble a small oven together out of the stone and wood laying about in the forest. Ironically, little ovens and fire pits were something he could build with confidence. His mother had taught him back when he was faunt and desperate to run across the Shire in search of fairies. She had always indulged him, letting him tout her about through back trails and shadowy glades. During their wanderings, their ‘walking holiday’ his father had called them, Belladonna had taught him basic wood craft.

It had been the cooking that he had taken to the most. And Belladonna had never been shy about making sure her son knew all the ways to undertake such a task. From bonfires to embers, she had taught him all the ways she knew how to cook in the wild. Bilbo hadn't had to build an oven in decades, but unlike grinding the grain, this was one activity Bilbo was confident in.

Forsythia gave Bilbo a look that plainly said she thought him a bit dense. “No. You are to bring that to the Lord Husband, on behalf of the Lady.”

 “O…k…?”

Lord. Bilbo turned the title over in his head, various elves and men flashing behind his eyes as he tried to parse the meaning of the request.

 Lady? Well, the Lady was obviously the Green Lady, Yavanna herself. which meant that Lord Husband was… Bilbo paused, his hand wrapping tight around the stalks of wheat and nearly crushing them. Perhaps he could blame his slow thoughts on his death, but husband? Husband?! Husband. Mahal. Father of the Dwarrow and Lord of the Mountain Halls. (That was a rather big thing to forget!)

Bilbo stared down at the wheat for a long moment before he slyly glanced up at the excited ent. “Do you perhaps,” Bilbo began, his eyes flicking towards the trail and the maze that led out of the forest, “know the way to the Lord's domain?”

The ent gave him a smile that was all blooming flowers and jagged bark-teeth. “Snapdragon will lead you down the path.” The ent gestured to a tiny entling that was hardly bigger than a rose bush that had been hovering in the undergrowth since Bilbo had been let down. “She knows the paths towards the boundary and can walk you to the edge of the domain.”

The little thing chittered and wiggled, practically dancing down the path with orange and red flowers swaying overhead. Bilbo instinctively whistled for her to loop back, calling after her as he would a faunt. (Thankfully, the little thing seemed delighted at the sound and came bounding back without issue.)

Forsythia laughed, the sound a mixture of breaking wood and shuffling vines. “Be careful,” she warned as Snapdragon began to impatiently run around in a circle. “There are some who do not think havens should be shared, and they will do anything to stop you.”

Bilbo held the grains tight in one hand and thought of Elrond and his mess of declared kin and their patronage. He thought of Arwen and the choice she had made. He thought of his mother and the friends she had lost when they had buried her in Shire ground. 

Bilbo thought of thirteen dwarrow and an afternoon with honey cakes. He thought of kings crowned with flowers and two pebbles who were so proud to be taught by their uncle under open sky.

Bilbo thought of Thorin and he grinned.

“There are some of us,” he warned, “who would do anything to make it happen.”

Chapter Text

A shriek cut through the peace of the morning and for a split second, Belladonna debated if it was worth throwing open the door to her smial and charging into the fray.

“Isadore!” Bungo screamed, his voice coming clear through the shuddered windows. “Isadore, get back here!”

Sighing, Belladonna settled further into the bench on the front stoop, her ankles crossed politely as she puffed furiously at her pipe. The smial she and Bungo were staying in for this decade was built into a rolling hill that rivalled Bag Shot Row. It wasn't quite a mountain, but it was large enough that Belladonna had her own smial, while thirty paces to the left and right, were her cousins.

The back end of each smial opened to a small chamber that held access to all the neighbour's in the hill. Presumably the chamber was meant to be a convenience and allowed clans to keep contact with multiple generations while providing each with their own space. This decade Bungo had agreed to settle with the Tooks. Belladonna had a feeling this visit was going to be cut obnoxiously short.

Like the few clans that had brides and children married to far branching families, Belladonna and Bungo did a ‘time-share’ between the clans. Every decade or so they'd pack their things and move to their ‘In-law’ kinsmen.

The solution didn't work for everyone and Belladonna had spent some rotations Wandering the Garden with her kinfolk. Bungo never begrudged her travels, and in fact he seemed to enjoy her return even more then when they had been alive. Most of the time she thought he liked her return because it meant their neighbours were overrun by her cousins and kin and he could laugh at the poor fools. Say what you will, but her husband was more than just a ‘stuffy’ Baggins.

If Belladonna timed it so that her father and brothers would come barrelling down the row, screaming like loons and setting off fireworks brighter than even Gandalf’s crackers, well, that was neither here nor there. Bungo always seemed to smile brighter on those days and it was so rare to have any sort of change in the Garden.

Sighing, Belladonna tilted her head back and tried not to think of relatives and missing kin. A few years back there had been a sudden influx of hobbits in the newer section of the Garden. They had arrived covered in soot and with haunted eyes. In a few years, they might leave their section of the Garden and settle amongst kin and kith, but Belladonna had a feeling the wounds incurred in life were still too raw for now.

The few who had left to settle with kin who had passed before the Burn had said little. Rumour had spread of course, there was little else to do in the Garden but talk. Names had spread, a list of newcomers passing through each smial and clan group. (Bilbo’s name hadn’t been on the list. Belladonna hadn’t known if she should be happy or concerned. Her boy had lived.)

(Her boy had lived for too long. )

(Something wasn’t right.)

The Fell Winter had caused something similar, the sudden influx of newcomers had shut down a part of the Garden as those who passed came to terms with the frost and their passing. When Belladonna had passed, a handful of years after the frost and the Fell, she had spent only a night in the new section. She had spent only a night under the Great Party Tree, her hands dug down into the dirt and tears dripping down her face as she realized what she had done.

Her boy, her Bilbo, left all alone.

She had not been able to hang on anymore. And her father coming down, sitting beside her bed as Bilbo took a much needed rest in his bedroom, had been the last straw. “You can leave, my flower. You do not have to stay here, not for us. Go home baby girl. There is no shame in it. We’ll keep an eye on dear Bilbo.”

She hadn’t been able to stay.

Bungo had met her at the edge of the field, hand held out as if she had just come home from another adventure. There had been no thinness in his face or blood on his lips. He looked much the same as he had when they had married, young and oh so foolish. They had stepped into the broader portion of the Garden together. 

And now Bungo was hollering at her cousin and Belladonna wondered if perhaps she should enter the smial and settle the issue before something was set on fire. Again.

“Good morning!”

The cry came from the front gate and Belladonna jerked up to sit as straight as her mother had always proclaimed was ‘the best sort of manners’. Considering Belladonna had managed to dine at Rivendell and wander a manageable section of Arda without worrying about manners of all things, she wasn’t too concerned about posture.

At the gate of the little front garden was a hobbit. Considering the size of the Garden and the sheer volume of hobbits that resided in her borders, Belladonna supposed there were a few she hadn’t managed to meet yet. But it was rare for anyone but a Took to migrate to other corners of the Garden and even they hardly travelled alone.

This hobbitess was someone Belladonna had never met and she looked nothing like a Took.

The woman was practically all bouncing curls. Her hair was bound up in a work scarf, tendrils of blond, brown, and every other hair colour Belladonna had ever seen on a cousin escaped to frame her face. There were freckles splashed across her cheeks and laugh lines carved deep around her eyes and mouth. For a moment, Belladonna could have sworn the woman’s face flickered, twisting into something all too manish before dripping into a mess of bark. And then Belladonna blinked, and the hobbitess’ face was nothing but freckles and laugh lines once again.

Belladonna opened her mouth again and then closed it just as quickly. Did she, should she point out the oddness? Was that something that should be noted? (Perhaps her mother had been on to something about manners. Maybe etiquette would have had some protocol for dealing with whatever had just happened.) Some newer souls had difficulty choosing how they should appear, stuck between the routine and familiarity of life and the realization there were no aches and pains in the Garden. Belladonna’s own father had a terrible habit of switching between schoolboy spryness and a feebleness that made her concerned he would disintegrate into a pile of dust.

Although, to be fair she was almost certain he did it for the reactions that unsuspecting hobbits would inadvertently give. But this woman was older, Belladonna didn’t know what about the woman made her so sure, but she felt ancient. Why the woman’s appearance would flicker into such foreign features Belladonna didn’t know.

She had never been one to turn down an adventure though, and this certainly felt like the beginnings of one.

“Good morning.” Belladonna offered after a moment as she reached over to put out her pipe. She had a feeling she wouldn’t get to finish her smoke.

“Why, do you mean to say that it is a good morning, or do you wish me a good morning whether I want it or not? Or perhaps you meant that this is a morning to be good on?” The woman said, her lips pulling up into a teasing smile, as if there were some private joke between the two of them.

Well, save for the smile, that was almost word for word a statement Gandalf had said to her many times he had come by for a visit. Whatever (and this woman was certainly a whatever, not a whoever,) the woman was, she appeared to know Gandalf. Or at the very least had a similar enough sense of humour as him.

“The second.” Belladonna reported as her husband shrieked. There was a wicked crash and both women paused as they waited to hear if an intervention would be necessary. When only a series of rapid footsteps sounded through the windows, they both relaxed.

Belladonna sighed. “Definitely the second, someone might as well have a good morning if it won’t be me.”

The woman threw her head back in wild laughter and Belladonna couldn’t help the smile that twitched around the corners of her mouth. Gesturing towards the open seat beside her, Belladonna invited the woman in through the gate. Still smiling, the woman practically bounced through the front garden. (For a moment, Belladonna thought she saw the grass and other plants lean towards the woman, turning slightly towards her as if they were sunflowers and she was their personal sun.)

“It has been a long time since I have seen this part of the Garden.” The woman said, her gaze flickering over the few parts of the neighbouring properties that could be seen, before she began to inspect the front porch and small yard.

“You are not missing much.” Belladonna admitted, barely flinching when a great clatter came from a smial or two over. There was a Great-Great-Great Aunt who lived there with her partner. The two of them had apparently settled in the smial when they first arrived in the Garden and only left to walk the seasonal boundary march. When they were home, they worked on all sorts of hobbies. One of which Belladonna swore was just an excuse to break pottery and crockery into miniscule bits for the sake of ‘art’.

“Oh?” Said the woman, her face falling slightly. “Nothing at all?”

Belladonna gave her a wry shrug. “Us Tooks have travelled most of the Garden and there are more than a few well worn paths. Besides, the fields need to be tended no matter where you are in the Garden.”

The woman looked a bit disheartened and Belladonna had the distinct thought the woman might have been from the older parts of the Garden, from a generation before the Shire. She had met a few of those hobbits during her wanderings, but they tended to stick to themselves. The ones she had met seemed to hold the opinion that living in the Shire had made hobbits soft. 

If Belladonna wanted to be shamed by her peers and gossiped about, she’d have gone to the main markets in Bugno’s trousers. But then, she was a Took and most outrageous events that could happen, had already been taken by her predecessors. Some clans just didn’t seem to mix well and Belladonna was about to go and force an integration with souls that were older then the hills she had grown up under. 

That being said, there were things worth doing in the Garden. Hobbits still gathered to have annual festivals, typically organised by the clan of whichever Thrain you had been led by. Belladonna still attended her father’s festivals, but some of the new souls had begun to create their own little festivals instead. Traditions had changed with the generations after all and Belladonna could not begrudge them their attempts at familiarity.

Then there were the Socials, Markets, and Mysteries. The socials were little brunches and picnics that happened every two weeks like clock work in the major parks. It was the easiest way to keep track of newcomers and clan movements across the Garden. Belladonna had gone to every different park at least once, which was a feat considering the size of the Garden. The markets were similar but those were mostly for the hobbyists. Crafters and homemakers could display different projects and swap them back and forth, or gain advice depending on what they were attempting to do. 

And then, lastly there were the mysteries. The Tooks mostly did them, but there had been the odd Chubb and Proudfoot who had joined in. The mysteries were games that could last decades and could span through multiple clans. The idea was to create a riddle, a puzzle, that had different clues and interactive pieces set within an acknowledged boundary. Belladonna had created one once and had involved every single one of her sisters in hiding the clues. The poor man who had been picked to lead the hunt had taken almost seven years to track down the whole puzzle and story. It was one of Belladonna’s finer works.

Regardless, the point was that the residents of the Garden made their own entertainment. It wasn’t great and Belladonna still ached to run and leave. She wanted to wander and travel, and while the Garden was beautiful, it was also too small for an eternity. (She saw the looks in the older hobbits, in the ones who had been there before the Shire. She saw how they repeated the same rituals and patterns, day in and day out. She saw the blank looks and the dullness of existence and she ached with the need to run away. )

An eternity was too long and the Garden was too small.

“Have you tried to leave?” The woman asked, her head tilting strangely to the side as she gazed out into the front yard.

“Of course.” Belladonna commented as she began to absently clean her pipe. “I’m a Took. Most of us have walked the boundary in its entirety. I think Elros and Imogen have a camp set up near the Gate for this rotation? Last I heard they were going to the brickwork beside the Gate with a chisel.”

“Do you think they’ll make it out?” The woman asked.

Belladonna couldn’t help but snort. “Nah, they’re on their fiftieth chisel. Belren, Belren Lightfoot down by the Canyon Pond? He’s been making most of the specialised tools for the markets for the past thirty years. He’s been heard grumbling at the market about ‘cut‘em off’. They might make it of course but I doubt it.”

The woman seemed to flinch at that admission, and for a moment, Belladonna could not help but look at her and wonder. A hobbit sat beside her on the bench, but if Belladonna were to blink, if she were to lean close and stare….

What would she see?

Belladonna had grown up in the Great Smials. She had grown up chasing the  sparkles and smoke rings Gandalf and released into the air. She had chased those bits of magic all the way into her adulthood. As a child, she had chased the magic of a Wandering firework maker. As an adult, she had trailed behind a Maia .

(Belladonna had known a messenger of the Valar. As a child, she had slipped mud into his shoes. Which was to say that Belladonna knew divinity. )

The woman turned to look at her, a thousand faces slipping across her skin like a kaleidoscope. Belladonna looked away, stomach rolling and twisting as the woman shifted and changed too quickly to follow.

“Do you know who I am?” The woman asked, her gaze almost a physical force against the side of Belladonna's head.

Not for the first time since the conversation had begun, Belladonna wished she had kept smoking, if only so that she had something to do with her hands. But she hadn't, and Belladonna was left with her fingers in a tangled knot and her ankles crossed ever so politely.

“I have a guess.” Belladonna murmured, very deliberately not looking towards the impossible woman of a thousand colours and faces.

(What was a god but a reflection of one's self? What was a reflection but a mirror of the world that dared to exist?)

Belladonna had thought the woman was old, perhaps from a generation pre-Shire. But in the end, it had been the little things. It had been the turn of the head and the curl in the hair. It had been the fact she looked nothing like her cousins and everything like her neighbours. It had been the little things and Belladonna very carefully did look at the goddess on her bench. “Hello my lady, Yavanna.”

From the corner of her eye, Belladonna could see a wicked smile cutting across the woman's shifting face. “Indeed.”

“My Lady,” Belladonna ventured, wondering for a moment if she were about to prove the validity of the saying, ‘fool of a Took’. “I have heard no stories of your visits, not even to the council of Thains. And I do not believe my father is able to keep that sort of a secret for long.”

The goddess laughed, that same startled guff from earlier. “A locked gate works in both directions, my daughter.”

And oh, Belladonna had not thought of that. She had not pondered the implication of a locked gate, aside from the obvious obstacle it offered. She had wanted to leave. Not once had she thought about something (someone) wanting to get in.

“Why now, if you could not come through earlier?” Belladonna couldn't help but ask.

Yavanna's hands stilled and in the yard, the flowering vines shivered and twisted towards the goddess in sharp movements. “I wanted my children to be safe, something I am sure you understand.”

Belladonna did not wilt under the sharp words. No, she had been a mother and a wife. She had been on adventures that had made her think of the reasons to come home. If there was anything Yavanna could say to her, this was the easiest to understand.

“Is there a threat to the Garden?” Belladonna asked as she twisted towards the door of the smial. Bungo would need to be warned, to be prepared. Her husband was many things, but a Took was not one of them. He needed fair warning and preparation before there was any attempt at change. He was an old fusspot, but he was her fusspot, and that made all the difference.

Yavanna cut her off before she could rise from the bench. “There is no danger to the Garden.”

“Then why are you here?”

“There is danger to your son.”

“Bungo!” Someone screamed as Belladonna turned to stare at the Green Lady in horror. “Bungo!”

The door to the smial blew open with a bang and Bungo barreled out, feet flying and hands outstretched to catch himself on the pillars of the deck. His hair was stuck up every which way and the front of his shirt was, for some reason, coated with flour and preserves.

“Bella? Bella, my flower, what's wrong?”

And oh, it was her that had been shouting, wasn't it?

She had known there was something wrong. She had known since the last of her son's playmates had come trudging into the Garden, whispering that Mad Baggins had outlived them all. Her baby was old, older than even her father had managed, and that was cause for concern. Hobbits were meant for a life of good cheer and good company. Their lifespan had just passed the average age of Men and hobbits had no fear of death, not when the Garden was just a short jaunt away.

Life was a blessing, but there came a point where outliving everyone was simply too cruel.

Her baby deserved to rest.

Her baby deserved to come home.

Her lips trembling, Belladonna could only watch with a distant sort of detachment as her hands shot up towards her husband. Bungo took her hands without a word, slipping down onto his knees before her. “Flower?”

His hands wrapped around hers and Belladonna leaned forward, her head slipping down to rest in the crook of his neck. Her pipe clattered to the ground with an echoing sort of thump that almost seemed too loud.

It was a bit funny in a twisted sort of way, Belladonna distantly thought. She had liked that pipe. She had bought it from a market some seasons back. The fellow who had been running the stall had apparently learned to whittle from a passing dwarrow caravan. The interest had followed the boy into adulthood, and he had turned into a Master Carpenter. Many of his smaller works kept to the designs the dwarrow had taught him as a young lad. The geometric etchings had caught Belladonna's eye and she had bartered for it immediately.

It would be a shame if the pipe was broken. 

“Belladonna?” Bungo asked, his hands slipping from hers to come and curl up into her hair, cradling the back of her head and neck. “Belladonna, what is it?”

(This was the reason she had given him a chance, all those years ago. The tenderness and care he had offered when she had come limping back from practice against the Bounders. He had not acted like she was breakable, but instead as a pillar to lean against. A friendly face that would offer bandages just as easily as a kind word or a smile. He had not wanted to change her, conquer her, but instead support her.)

(This was the hobbit she had fallen in love with, no matter that their families did not understand it.)

“Bilbo.” She cried, her breath shaking as she tried to press her nose further into his neck, the scent of berries and fruit coming up from Bungo’s shirt, pressing oddly against her nose as the flour attempted to make her sneeze. “My Bilbo.”

Bungo stiffened, his hands momentarily turning into claws as he pulled her impossibly closer. “Bilbo? Our Bilbo?”

Belladonna could only shudder, flashes of the Fell Winter and her son’s gaunt cheeks hauntingly teasing her. All she could see were the unlucky ones, the poor faunts that hadn’t survived, superimposed over the face of her son. Death masks of blood and gore dimming the happy smile and freckles he had inherited from his father.

“We can go find him, Flower. We knew he would come sooner or later. He’s your son, he’ll probably be dancing under the party tree and rubbing his age in the face of your father! I doubt anyone will ever be able to take the title of ‘oldest hobbit’ from our boy. Stubborn brat that he is.” Bungo soothed her, his voice muffled by the roar of Belladonna’s heartbeat in her ears. By the end, he was rambling, half rocking her as he pulled her up and off the bench, the side of his head tucked against hers.

Bungo had never seen Bilbo grow thin. Through no fault of his own, Bungo had missed that part of Bilbo’s life. He couldn’t understand, couldn’t see the same things that Belladonna did the longer they stood on the porch. He didn’t see the utter terror that had crossed Bilbo’s face when the horns of Buckland had echoed throughout the Shire. He hadn’t seen the way their boy’s eyes had grown dark and haunted. He hadn’t seen it and Belladonna knew, she knew, her boy would look the same right now. 

“It’s not that simple.” The Green Lady said, her voice low and soft, a direct counterpoint to Belladonna’s racing heart and rising anxiety.

“Who are you?” Bungo asked, half twisting Belladonna away from the goddess and towards a direct path to the front door. “And how do you know?”

Yanking herself away, Belladonna spun about and stared at the goddess. Whatever the answer, she wanted to know. She needed to know.

The goddess continued to sit on the bench, hair still bound back by a work scarf and her hands crossed gently in her lap. But the tension Belladonna had noticed earlier, the wry twist to her mouth and the unease in her posture, had boiled up and over. (It looked a bit like that first Winter Festival Belladonna had spent in the Baggins smial. That whole night Bungo’s parents had simply stared at her, never saying a word. Bungo had done most of the talking, barely getting any sort of response from his father aside from a grunt. Yavanna looked like Belladonna thought she might have, all those years ago.)

“Bilbo Baggins did me and mine a great service.” Yavanna said, her gaze unnerving and hard. “And through no fault of his own, he is to be punished for it.”

“Excuse me?” Later, Belladonna would be unsure who had snapped the question, her or Bungo. The thought that Bilbo, little mischievous Bilbo would be punished for helping a goddess, was unfathomable. Even Belladonna hadn’t been able to do more than bother a few elves in Rivendell, and she had been considered quiet the ‘disturber of the peace’ in her time. What could Bilbo have done?

“Eru wishes to reward Bilbo with a place in the Pure Lands, the haven of the elves.”

“But then he wouldn’t come home! ” Belladonna gasped, hand instinctively reaching out to latch onto Bungo.

Yavanna gave her a rueful smile and spread her hands apart in a ‘what can you do gesture’. “No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t come home. He would never see you, and he would never see those he lost.” She paused, her teeth biting into her lip in a gesture that struck Belladonna as utterly mortal. “In that, I think he is much like you. Much like me as well. Too many exotic flowers in the garden of his soul for Shire land to fully support.”

And just like that, Belladonna understood. The whole thing clicked together like the puzzles her Aunt Dahlia scattered across the kitchen table. “You’re going to open the gate.” Belladonna said as she stepped forward, the front of her dress marred with flour and gods knew what else.

“Yes.”

“You’re not bringing my boy home.” Belladonna took another step forward.

“No.”

Bungo made a choked off sound that might have been a gasp but Belladonna didn’t spare him a glance. “Where is he?”

Yavanna stood, her skirts twisting around her legs as she too took a step forward, nearly too close to Belladonna, her voice a low whisper as if she were afraid to be overheard. “He is not on the paths the reapers tread. Right now, Eru does not know, the problem is contained. The situation will not remain like this for long. Unless something happens, your boy will be found before he can reach his goal.”

“His goal?” Bungo butt in, his arm slipping around Belladonna’s waist in an act of comfort rather than restraint. (Everyone knew Bungo would step back and let her tear apart her enemies without both words and fists. He had never been one to get in her way. If anything, Belladonna rather thought he would be the first one to cheer and go around gathering bets. After all, the dead couldn’t die twice. )

For the first time, Yavanna appeared to hesitate. Her gaze dropped down to the deck and Belladonna could only watch as something like grief slipped into the edges of her smile and pooled under her eyes. The goddess gave a little huffing laugh and curious, Belladonna followed her gaze.

There on the deck was her pipe, forgotten in the commotion and utterly cracked from base to tip.

“We didn’t know.” Yavanna started, defensive and sorrowful. “I didn’t know that the havens would be separate. I had never thought to ask, why would I? The Great Song had all of your melodies and notes threaded into it to create one harmony. Why would the haven be any different?”

Belladonna found she couldn’t look away from the pipe, the entirely dwarven influenced pipe.

“I didn’t make you just for you to be alone. By the time I had realised Eru’s plan and had this haven ready, your people had intermingled across Arda. In the end, with the wars and the deaths, all I could do was lead you to the Shire and hope the pain of it all drove you to be isolationists. I had hoped that you could not miss what you did not know.”

More pieces of the puzzle snapped together and Belladonna finally understood why the old generation, the generation before the Shire, did not like to interact with them. Why they tolerated the Tooks and the Brandybucks, but shied away from the rest. It was not that they thought them soft. It was grief.

Belladonna missed her friends, yes. She missed her elven travel companions and the few dwarrow she had met in Bree. She missed some of the humans she had travelled with, and wondered after more than a few of them. Most days, she had made her peace with the lack of knowledge. Most days she understood that she would never know what happened to them, would never say hello to them again or ask after their own adventures and journeys.

But the people she had lost were her friends. Yes, she missed them, but they were not her family. Her family was here, in the Garden. Her father was in the Took Halls and her siblings were in the travel smials. She had a routine to see her in-laws and her husband was always willing to put up with her wanderings. The only one she was missing was her son.

But what if Bungo had been a Man or an Elf? What if Bilbo had been a true halfling, born of two species and only able to enter one haven? What if Belladonna had not had her family in the Garden? An eternity to look forward to and no family to speak of.

The Tooks had wanted to leave for adventures but now Belladonna wanted to break open the gate for an entirely different reason.

“If one of you manages to make it to another Haven. If one of you manages to break in, then the seeds of discontent would be sown in that Haven as well. The elves will never argue against their maker, not as things stand, but if the Men, Hobbits, and the Dwarrow take a stand…” Yavanna offered a bit desperately, her hands held out to Belladonna and Bungo beseechingly. “I cannot be seen making a move. I have been too vocal about this issue in the past. But if enough of the Valar have cause to speak out…”

“You’re going to open the gate.” Belladonna repeated as her own hand slipped into the grasp of her goddess in understanding. “You’re going to open all the gates.”

Yavanna gave her hand a squeeze and offered a smile that was altogether too Tookish. “I’m going to break the gate. How quickly can you gather your kin?”

“Isadore!” Belladonna shouted as she spun away and rushed towards the door. Inside there was a great crash from the kitchen and Belladonna ripped open the door with glee. “Isadore, get your father!”

Behind her, she could faintly hear Bungo’s sarcastic “Does that answer your question?”, but she could hardly stop now. There was an adventure to be had!

Chapter Text

When the knock came at the door, Thorin barely held back the impulse to throw his hammer at the offender. That wasn't to say he didn't mind guests, but there were very few people who would genuinely come down to Thorin's forge and workshop to inquire on his mood. No, far too many people came down thinking they had the right to demand Thorin's attendance at whatever council was meeting next.

He was dead, he had thought the paperwork might end too.

Thorin had died uncrowned and felled low to the curse of his forefathers. He had expected his death, his arrival in Mahal's Halls, to bring shame and penance. In those last days, in the days he barely remembered outside of a haze of paranoia and gold, there was a cloak of anger and betrayal. He knew, had always known he supposed, that the betrayal was not against him personally.

The hobbit, the gentlemen of rolling hills and ink stained fingers, had done what was necessary. The hobbit had done what was needed to save the mountain and bring relief to the people Thorin had forgotten all about. The betrayal hadn't been personal, but Thorin could do little but bow his head in shame of the necessity of such actions.

On cold days, when Thorin did not chain himself to his forge and shop, he could still feel the heat of the hobbit's skin against his fingers. The hobbit's fluttering heartbeat still pulsed under the pad of his thumb and the sweat still trailed down the palm of Thorin's hand. In that moment on the side of the mountain, Thorin had meant it, all the anger and betrayal that had raced through his blood. Thorin would have done it, would have thrown him from the wall and laughed at the gore the hobbit would have left behind.

(Thorin dared not to think of the hobbit’s name. Dared not to think of the words that had crouched behind his teeth and curled around his heart when he had thought of the creature of the rolling hills.)

(He did not have the right to say the hobbit’s name, let alone the endearments that coloured every memory he had of the hobbit.)

"Brother."

Well, if there was one person who Thorin would never throw from the shop, it would have been him. Ferein. And their family knew it, often sending the young dwarf down to haul Thorin out of the shop and into the crowds of the Hall. Even now, decades after Ferin's death, Thorin couldn't help the way his heart leapt and his breath caught, when the perpetually young dwarf so much as cast a smile his way.

"Thorin, you have a visitor."

Carefully, Thorin laid his hammer on the table and began the cool down procedure for the forge. Just because he was dead didn’t mean the forge was not to be respected and kept with the same awe it had earned in life. “If it is Lauzor, then tell Amad to deal with him. Adad has kept her from the table for too long, she’d enjoy taking him to task.”

In truth, Thorin should have been up in the halls, or at least with the council. From the newly arrived, the whole Hall had heard of the Shadow that had swept across Arda, and the dwarrow had borne the brunt of it. Orcs and Goblins had crawled up through lower tunnels and fought to take whole mountains.

There had been marches to seal off the tunnels and attempts to backtrack through the darkness to stop the flood of the filth. Most attempts had been successful from what Thorin had heard. The realms of men were still impacted and the dwarrow could spare little to no warriors to support their neighbours, but the tide of Orcs could have been much worse had the dwarrow not gone into the depths and held their lines.

There were stories coming into the halls from haunted warriors and slain civilians, of the last stand of the free people. The healers had their hands full, taking in the wounded and bringing them to the lower halls, away from the noise and the rabble. The soul of a dwarf was a hearty thing, but even that could sustain a wound that carried over to Mahal’s halls.

Thorin himself still walked with a limp from the final battle on the ice. (Nobody mentioned the burns on his cheek and wrist, suspiciously in the shape of desperate hobbit hands. The hobbit had tried to comfort him in those last moments, and Thorin would carry the shame of his actions as penance long past the day the dwarrow road out into the wide world again.)

“Amad already beat you to it.” Ferin grinned, cheeky smile lighting up the whole room. “Apparently he tried to break into Adad’s rooms to speak to him, and Amad was not happy with the interruption.”

Thorin choked, eyes a bit wild at the thought. Children could not be born in the halls of Mahal and as such, one tended to learn how to knock very quickly. Woe to those who did not. Thorin mostly just stayed in his forge and kept up the pretence of being craft wed.

The company, his nephews, knew better. They only had to take one look into his work room to know Thorin had told a lie. The first project he had worked on, the one he had tediously reforged and reworked until it was perfect, sat quietly on a shelf never to be worn.

It was a delicate thing and if one did not know of Thoin’s skill with metal, they might have thought the twisting vines and flower petals to be real. Thorin had never been crowned King under the Mountain, not truly. But the closest he had come was sitting in a Shifter’s garden while ink stained fingers gently placed a circlet of grasses and leaves Thorin could not name, onto his brow.

He could not recall what had happened to the circlet. It had been lost somewhere between under the tree and the Shifter’s front door. In life he had been embarrassed to be crowned with such fragile things, positive that his cousins would snicker and laugh at his appearance. In death, he wished he could return to that moment for an eternity, to stare up at the hobbit and trace the freckles that had blossomed across his flushed skin.

But he could not go back. He was stuck, caught between the knowledge the hobbit had lived and that Thorin had done such terrible things.

Thorin could not remember the circlet with much detail, not enough to replicate it. He had been too distracted to take in the hobbit’s ramblings about the meaning of each plant, too concerned with the thoughts and reactions of his kin. In death, he had time to think about the fact the hobbit had shared something with him, had crowned him in the shadow of Thorin’s kingdom and cared not for royalty or exile.

Dwarrow held the fact you hold entire conversations through stones. Different gems held different meanings and Thorin could not help but wonder if perhaps the hobbit’s plants held the same reverence in his culture.

(He could not help but wonder what message had been woven into his crown.)

In that first decade, Thorin had tried to mount gemstones and metals that spoke of everything he had never been able to say out loud. But the circlet had been too heavy, too mournful for the memory of a hobbit that yet lived, and Thorin had cast it aside. Then Oin had passed and Thorin had been there to welcome him into the Halls, briskly walking him to the Hall of Healing when the dwarf declared himself able to ply his craft, ‘no need to wait lad, best get to where I am needed’.

And for the first time since Thorin had died, he saw greenery.

There in the halls of healing, were herbs and flowers.

The plants were those used in tonics and teas, something Oin said worked as a ‘placebo’ sort of effect. When pushed, Oin admitted the healers issued medicine and the injured dwarrow would take it, the medicine working precisely because the dwarrow expected it to work just as it had when they lived.

The healers sought to work on the souls of the dead, there was no mortal medicine that would transfer. But souls were resilient things.

And Thorin had stayed there, in the halls of healing, pestering his cousin about the uses of such plants and what effects they had. Dwarrow plant lore was pitiful in comparison to hobbit knowledge, and Thorin knew any virtues or ideas he assigned to the plants through Oin’s explanation was probably wrong. But the circlet had been too heavy with dwarrow gems and metals. Perhaps it would be lighter, be kinder, in the fashion of the Shire.

So he had reforged it, smelted down the crown until it was formless. And then he had rebuilt it as he would have if he had been in the Shifter’s yard. He remade it, drafting plans from the sketches of plants and flowers Oin had been all too happy to provide.

When he was finished, Thorin had tucked it away onto the highest shelf in the darkest corner. (Then the collection in the corner had grown. A little bouquet of flowers, based on the embroidery Dis had meticulously stitched during one of the Durin dinners after she had passed. A series of small acorns when the boys had begged him to work with them on their etching. A little tree when the new arrivals spoke of the whispers of the King of Gondor.)

(His collection had grown and to his relief no one had asked him any questions he had not been able to deflect.)

“I still don’t understand why you made such a thing.” Ferin said as he looked towards the corner Thorin often pretended did not exist.

“It was a project I wished to do while I was alive but had never found the time.” Thorin absently replied, as he always did when Ferin brought up the topic. 

“Thor…” Ferin trailed off, the childhood nickname falling between them in a feeble attempt to bridge a gap Thorin had no clue how to close.

He turned aside, straightening the already aligned tools. “Look, if the Council has summoned the Ebroian kings to vote on the placement and building of the new halls for those souls who were under Dain's rule but not of the Iron Mountains. Then I still hold the right to abstain from such a vote. I have no solution and showing my face will only complicate matters.”

“Thorin,” Ferin snapped, the boy having never learned patience while he lived. “The last of your company has passed.”

And oh. Oh! That was an entirely different matter.

Thorin rushed past his brother and headed for the entrance foyer for the Eborian dwarrow. (Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his brother's blond hair and for a split second, a lifetime of warning his sister’s-son away from the forge caught at his tongue. Then Ferin turned and Thorin could do little but run run run…)

Ferin’s laughter haunted his sprint through the halls, heralding his presence to the poor fools who got in his way.

And then he broke through into the room and well…

(“You know, hobbits live in holes. Burrows, the Men of Bree call it.” The hobbit said, fingers wrapped oddly around the borrowed pipe. Beneath their feet, the balcony creaked and groaned, and for a moment, Thorin wondered if they might yet fall down into the lake below. The hobbit’s smile was a small thing, all brittle pieces and heavy with the weight of the cold that had plagued him for the last few days. “Do you think a mountain could be called a rather large burrow?”)

(“I think, Master Burgaler, you could call my mountain whatever you want.”)

In the center of the room, Oin had picked up his brother and spun him around. The younger’s shouts blasted off the walls and for a moment, the Company was all together. For a moment, they were partying in Laketown, feasting in the hall of the skin changer, singing in the dinning room of the hobbit.

Fili and Kili jumped on the pair, gleefully shouting and somehow it seemed Nori was pulled into the pile. Which sent his brothers charging in, and then it was just a free for all. There were punches and shouts, promises of payment for bets and good natured ribbing.

Thorin found himself leaning against the doorframe, far away from the madness of the crowd, a a smile twitching in the corner of his mouth. (They were together. They were here. Safe. Nothing would get his kin, nothing would harm his company. They were here! ) Old habits kicked in and he found himself counting the heads of his kith and kin.

“Golin!” Dwalin shouted, mohawk pointed and fierce as he grabbed his cousin around the neck and hauled him down to twist his knuckles into Golin’s skull. Ignoring Oin’s yelp at having his brother stolen away so quickly. “Thought you were never gonna join us! What finally got you?”

One. Two. Three. Thorin ticked off his cousins from his mental list.

“Did someone screw up on their numbers and your poor heart couldn’t take it anymore?” Fili shouted as he dodged a swipe from Ori.

Four, five, and six. The poor Ri had finally grown into his stature after the Battle of Five Armies. Which meant that Ori had an impressive reach and the ability to put the Ri strength behind his strikes. Apparently the boy had outmatched even Dori. A terrifying thought in of itself. Honestly, his nephews should just be grateful they had no real need for medical aid in the Halls.

Ori had an impressive punch.

“Ohhhh! Or was it a pen?” Kili mused, feigning a stabbing motion.

“No. No. No!” Nori tsked as he straightened out his shirt and ducked his brother. “Paperweight. Or a gold bar. You were still working in the coffers, right? There are thieves aplenty.”

“You would know.” Bofur called out. “But I’m thinking it was Narine’s Dinner Special, that shit was rank. ”

“That would have done it.” Bombur agreed, his nose scrunching up in disgust. “That dam’s cooking was an affront to nature, that’s what it was.”

Seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven, were quickly added to the tally.

“Ah, see I believe it would have been the lovely and darling…” Balin began teasingly.

“No!” Kili quickly shouted, bounding over to slap a hand down to cover Balin’s mouth. “I got how many decades without having to hear those stories. We ain’t starting eternity like that. ”

Twelve. And with Thorin including himself, that led him to thirteen.

“If you must know!” Golin began, voice booming as he threw Dwalin off and tripped up Nori. “It was an elf!”

“How terrible!” Kili teased as he ducked out of the way of another swipe. “To be killed by an elf! If only the rest of us could be so lucky.”

In the background, Balin pretended to hurl.”Look lad, you might have been besotted by your ‘Lady of Starlight’ but the rest of us don’t need to hear you go over the whole thing again. Please, we have all of eternity. Give my ears a break for at least another decade!”

“My wee Gimli!” Golin dramatically wailed, falling to his knees as he threw his hands over his heart. “Mahal, save me boy from such foolishness of his cousin’s mistake!”

“Now you started it.” Fili muttered to Balin. 

“Which cousin?” Oin asked.

“You.” Golin accused as he spun about and pointed at Kili.

“Me?” Kili shouted, taken aback by the whole thing. “What did I ever do?!”

“Did you want that chronologically, or alphabetically?” Ori asked absently as he stepped between his brothers and held them as far apart as he could. 

“Boy’s got a point.” Bifur rumbled, arms crossed over his chest and grin cutting through the scar that bisected his face. “You didn’t live long but the list of things you got into?” He shook his head in mock disapproval. “We heard about it even down in the lower levels in the Blue Mountains. ‘Sides, now you’ve got how long under your belt? I’m sure there’s more than a few things we could dig up.”

Kili went pale and Fili burst out laughing. Thorin could barely keep the grin off his face.

“And you!” Golin shouted, spinning about to point at Balin. “You’re the one who got the idea into his head!”

Thorin wasn’t the only one who fell into stunned silence at the accusation. Kili having done something was far more probable than Balin having influenced the wee boy. 

“Sneaking off and eloping with that dam!” Golin continued, hands up in the air even as his brother tackled him from behind and nearly took him to the ground.

“Oi! My Sulza was the best damn thing that happened to me!” Balin hissed, hair mused and braids in disarray as Dwalin burst into laughter behind him. The whole company hooting and hollering as Balin’s cheeks became flushed.

This time, Thorin didn’t try to fight the smile. In life, they had not spoken of Sulza. In death, there was no such concern. Sulza had been Balin’s wife. At the time, their marriage had been the scandal of the mountain, no matter how much Fundin had tried to stamp out the rumours. Balin, the eldest son of the mountain diplomat and a Durinson, had eloped with a dam! No one had been invited to the wedding, not his father and certainly not his cousins.

The scandal had been all the more horrifying for the fact that out of the two brothers, it had been Dwalin who people had expected to break the mould. Instead, the eldest ‘In had come back with a Broadbeam Dam and an axe for anyone who dared to question his decision. For her part, Sulza had made no secret of the fact she was willing to fight for her place in her husband’s life.

Thorin remembered more than a few afternoons sitting across from the dam as she politely shook down the Crafter’s Council. To be quite frank, Sulza scared him. (Dis had loved her, had followed along behind the dam with wide eyes and twitching fingers. There were a lot of people who had contributed to Dis’ steel spine, but none had as much impact as Sulza’s unshakable grin and quick wit.)

Then the dragon had come three years into their marriage and Balin had never been the same. She had died in the fire and in the grief that had struck Balin in the aftermath, no one had doubted their union. Thorin wasn’t sure who had cried more in the wake of her death. Balin, or DIs. 

“My poor heart!” Golin cried, completely missing the growls that were coming from Balin. “My wee boy! Eloped!”

“I thought you said it was an elf?” Kili asked in confusion.

“I told you to watch your diet! But no! You had to go and keep ignoring your brother and your healer!” Oin shouted, his volume reminiscent of his later years when it appeared he was going deaf. (Personally, Thorin had thought the dwarf wasn’t deaf as much as he was selective. But on the other hand, Thorin liked his kneecaps where they were, thank you very much.) “Your heart wouldn’t have given out from the shock if you had just listened! ”

“Wait.” Kili gasped in delight as he raced up to Golin and grabbed at his cousin’s hands.

“Don’t tell me!” Fili shouted, a grin cutting across his face in his delight.

“Gimmers got himself an elf !” The boys cried at the same time.

“My boy didn’t even invite me to the wedding!” Golin cried, yanking Kili in as he all but collapsed onto the boy with a wail. Kili for his part, flailed and attempted to yank himself from the tight grip.

Golin didn’t appear to notice.

For all that Thorin wanted to jump into the chaos and greet his cousin, there was something holding him back. Thirteen. The last of his company totalled thirteen. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy to see Golin. The old boulder was probably the best source of news they’d get in regards to the living realm for the next decade or so. But it was just…

Thirteen.

His company didn’t total thirteen.

Where was the last? Where was the lucky one? The lucky fourteenth. His burglar.

Where was…

“Thorin.” Golin’s voice dragged him out of the spiral and Thorin couldn’t help but look to his cousin. 

The room had fallen silent and Thorin found himself standing before his company. His cousins and friends spread out before him, his nephews pushed to stand by his side as they never had the chance in life. Thorin wanted to welcome his cousin, to grieve and rejoice in his cousin’s attendance in the halls, but his cousin beat him to it.

Stepping forward, Golin grabbed at his wrists, previous dramatics dropped in favour of something far more serious. The words failed in Thorin’s throat.

“Thorin.” Golin slowly said, his hands tightening around Thorin’s in a grip that was meant to be comforting. “We won.”

“I know.” Thorin slowly nodded. “Dain took up the crown.”

Golin’s face twisted into something akin to grief. “No, Thorin. Not that battle.”

“You mean…” Bombur trailed off, voice breaking in a strange mixture of relief and horror.

For a moment, Thorin could only look between the two. Bombur had died rather recently. As was his right, the dwarf had not relayed any news of the living, instead keeping to his brother and uncle, occasionally reaching out to Nori of all people. There were few secrets among the dead, eventually everything came to light. Eternity had a way of removing the need for silence and distrust. If one did not want to speak of their end, such was their right.

Thorin was not one to push, not anymore.

“The boy lived.” Golin confirmed, face falling with that same terrible sadness even as he seemed to give great news. “All four of them went home.”

“And…” Bombur asked, hands spread out as if to beg for a certain answer. As if he could ward off any other type or response aside from the one he desired.

Golin’s face twisted up in despair. “They left.” He said, voice trembling and gaze twisting to lock onto the floor.

“They?” Nori cut in, hands twitching as if he could simply steal the words from Golin’s mouth.

Golin nodded, hands clasped in front of his face as he bowed slightly to Thorin. Thorin would have stumbled back if it weren’t for how his nephews suddenly flanked his sides. Their hands fell onto his shoulders and Thorin wanted to shrug them off.

He wanted to push the boys away and grab Golin by the arms, if only so that he would stop bowing. If they were alive, if they had been under the mountain and Thorin had held the crown, Golin’s position would have been one of great sorrow, of great shame. The incline of his head, the twist of his hands, the motions of his bow that had jostled his braids into a disarray that meant only one thing.

“Golin?” Thorin whispered, hands shaking and heart thudding as if he were under threat of another death.

“I am sorry.” Golin whispered, head still bowed. “I could not protect the boy who would have been your heartson.”

There were a hundred different things Thorin had been expecting Golin to say. This had not been one of them.

“I have a son?” Thorin whispered his lungs emptying the same way they had all those years ago when he had been thrown down onto the ice.

“We have a brother/cousin?” The boys shouted, the two of them spinning to look at each other as they split the ending of their sentence in two separate directions.

Bilbo had a child.

“His wife?” Thorin murmured, heart frozen in his chest and ice climbing up the back of his throat in a cruel mimicry of the blood he had choked on in those final hours. There had been no official claim, no bindings or oaths that wrapped around their hearts. There had been whispers, yes, and moments stolen in the dark. But Thorin had been foolish. He had not declared his intent.

Thorin had ordered Bilbo to go home, to leave the cold East and travel back to the warmth of the west and the comfort of his armchair and books.

Bilbo had no reason to pine. He had no reason to remain alone and apart.

(Thorin wouldn’t have wanted him too. Not truly. Bilbo was a creature of warmth and sunshine, of growth and vibrancy. There had been no reason for him to wither and fade like a flower before the frost. Not when he could return to his rolling hills and settle back into a life that did not threaten him from the ramparts…)

(Thorin had many regrets, but there were none so much as the weight he had placed upon the hobbit’s shoulders.)

Golin immediately shook his head, braids flying about even as he refused to look up. “No, the boy was his cousin before he became his nephew-son. Bilbo named the boy his heir when he came to live in his halls after his parents’ death.”

“Poor mite mimicked Bilbo in all the worst ways, eh?” Bofur chuckled darkly. “Parents dead in the water and ice, and nothing but far flung relations to watch over ‘em. It was like looking at a painting the first time I saw the boy.”

“A painting of ‘im.” Bifur agreed, hand carelessly waving towards Thorin. “Black hair, blue eyes, and all sorts of stubborn.”

“And I could not protect him.” Golin admitted, head still bowed and hands twisted together in penance. “My wee Gimli went in my stead. Offered what he could, but the stories that got sent back to us…”

Thorin’s mouth went dry and for a moment, the room seemed to still. An eon and an instant, rolled into a heartbeat of fear. Behind him, Nori and Bofur both went into a storm of curses. Bofur’s hat hit the ground with a thud that seemed much too loud and Nori’s ever present knives tinked off the walls with sparks and chips flying every which way.

“They found your bodies.” Golin whispered to Balin and Ori, face twisting in despair. “They went into the mines and the depths.”

All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. (Thorin remembered when Ori, sweet little Ori, had come into the Halls. The boy had been a jaded thing, snarling and starved in ways that looked more reminiscent of cave-ins and sieges. Thorin had met him in this room, had waited with the patience he had never found in life for Ori to come to. Had waited and listened as Ori ranted and screamed about the losses. Had stood there as the youngest Ri, the boy who had followed him with bright eyes and a steady hand, shook and wailed.)

(The boy had ended up under Oin’s care. Had stayed down in the halls of healing like the leader he had grown to be, watching over his men and healing until all that remained on his soul was a scar on his chest and a slice across his cheek. Thorin had never found the words to ask what had caused the scars. To ask what haunted the boy in death so much that the scars twisted and cut across his soul. )

He had only spoken once of the depths of Moria, and even then all he had said was two things. “Drums in the deep.” And “Durin’s Bane.”

“My boy, your heart-son.” Golin hesitated, hands shaking and voice wrecked with grief. “They fought a Balrog. ”

And perhaps Thorin had been spending too much time in the forge and not enough time with his kin because it was only now that he put the pieces together. His cousins, his company, had been hoarding information, gathering all the tales they could, tracking something in the world of the living. And Thorin? Thorin had simply thought them concerned with surviving kin, with friends and clans that they had left behind.

He had not thought them to be tracking hobbits.

“He left the Shire?” Thorin croaked, the words torn from him.

No child of Bilbo would be incompetent, but to leave the Shire? To leave the rolling hills and the comfort of his Uncle’s halls? What would have driven him to such lengths? Bilbo himself was a warning to such dangers, to what happened to gentlefolk when they walked into the wilds. Danger and tragedy were around every corner. The fact that Bilbo allowed his charge into the wilds spoke volumes of the danger the boy would have already faced.

“Oh Thorin.” Bombur whispered, the second last of his company to pass. “Do you remember Bilbo’s magic ring?”

…***...

It all came tumbling out. The War of the Shadow. The danger. How Bilbo’s ring had been found to be the One. How Frodo, his son, his heart-child, had taken up the task as Bilbo’s body failed him. How the child had marched through Mordor.

And then, when it was all over, how the call went out for aid. How the boy had gone home and called for aid from Thorin’s kin when the Shire had burned. 

(It was the worst sort of mimicry, Thorin couldn’t help but think. A mountain burned and a people in exile. The rolling hills and greenery were torn to mulch and razed. Thorin should never have asked the hobbit. He should never have brought the danger to Bilbo’s doorstep.)

(He should have known.)

(No good deed went unpunished.)

…***...

Dis found him later, as she always did. Much like their Amad, she had learned how to bear the weight of the Durin rages. Unlike their Amad, she was just as likely to fling herself into the blinding red then she was to suffer in silence.

He had torn the forge apart. Had thrown his tools at the wall and watched in apathy as his blades became gouged and nicked from the unforgiving rock. His leg had given out midway through the rage and he had yet to stop feeling the burn of the hobbit’s fingertips on his cheek and his wrist.

Thorin was a tinkerer, a repairer of other people’s mistakes and errors. He was no great master forger. There were no great crafts attributed to his name, and in the world of Men, that had been no issue. Dwarrow work was built to last decades and centuries. Men did not. Good metal work for Men was made to last maybe a decade. Perhaps even two. In exile, this had meant easy work for Thorin.

Repairs were plentiful in the villages of Man.

While this kept food on the table and something of a roof over the heads of his nephews, it did mean that Thorin had never worked his skillset to the level that would have been expected of a king. His masterpiece was the crown, the sweeping circlet of flowers that he held in his hands in the halls of the dead. If he were to submit it to the crafter’s council, he would be given his Master’s Excellence mark.

He would (could) never show the circlet.

The work was not his to show. It was not his.

“Thorin.” His sister called, her voice that stern cadence she had carried all her life.

“I failed him.” Thorin whispered even as he saw his sister pace towards him.

Reaching his side, she swept the mess from the work bench with a quick brush of her arm, and hopped up onto the bench as if she were a pebble. The tips of her boots poked out from under her skirts and Thorin had the briefest flash of when she really had been a pebble, gaunt and tiny, sitting on his bench as he made yet another bucket of nails.

Even back then she had been the first to call him out of his own head.

“You did.” She agreed, feet swinging and kicking freely. “You failed me too. My boys. And our people.”

It would have hurt less had she gut him.

“But.” She continued, her boots tap tap tapping against the leg of the bench. “You also won. If you had not gone, if you had not taken those steps and your journey, we would have all died. If you had not leant a hand to the death of Smaug, then the Shadow would have had another strong hold and access to the tunnels that swept out below the mountain. If you had not given your hobbit that shirt of mirthil, then your heart-son would have been dead a dozen times over.”

Thorin’s hand froze, his fingers halfway through stroking the petal of a flower. Dis had never forgiven him, had never allowed him to forget that it had been his foolishness that had killed her boys and left her alone in Arda. Dis’ anger was legendary and it had taken many years before she was able to look at him without throwing a punch. (They were dwarrow. Anger and grief were much the same.)

It had been Vili in the end that calmed her.

“When Vili passed.” Dis started, her voice softening just enough to make Thorin look up and catch her eye. “If I could have marched into these Halls and stolen away his soul, I would have.”

Thorin remembered those days. Remembered her rage and the splintered glass like moments that spiraled out from dealing with a collapsed mine and the death of a crew in one brutal stroke. There had been no survivors and Vili might have lived, if he had not turned further into the still collapsing shaft to shut down the gas pipes.

If he hadn’t, the whole side of the mountain would have blown.

The knowledge had not made his death any easier to bear.

“But I could not.” Dis said, her gaze heavy and piercing. “The living cannot breach the Halls of the Dead.”

But Mahal, she had tried. If she had not had her sons, if there had not been enough work after the collapse to keep her going, Thorin would have thought she joined Vili immediately. (Later, it had been Dwalin that found her in the temple, Vili's bow in hand and her forehead pressed against the statue of their Maker. Dwalin never said what it took to drag her away, but Thorin could guess.)

(He had done the same with the totems that survived the Desolation.)

“Bilbo has been granted the right to rest in the Halls of the Elves.” Thorin breathed as he looked back down to the circlet. “Both he and his son.”

“I heard.” Dis’ words were clipped and short. “Even in death the elves are cruel.”

“He is not here. ” Thorin croaked out. It was only to Dis, to his sister that he had practically raised and then later helped raise her sons that he could show such vulnerability. She may not have forgiven him for his part in the deaths of her children, but out of all their family, she was the only one who understood the ache their lives have left on their souls.

Thorin wasn't even sure why he had expected Bilbo to be sent to the halls. He was a hobbit and Thorin was a dwarf. Mahal's Halls were only safe because no other species could enter. The dwarrow were transgressions against Eru himself. Their entire existence hinged on the continued ignorance of the god-king.

Thorin wasn't special.

Bilbo was never coming to the Halls.

“Bilbo's boy…” Thorin whispered, eyes closing as he leaned forward to press the circlet against his forehead. (The burn of a desperate hand stroking across his cheekbone ached at the contact.)

Dis hummed, her boots still hitting the bench with that infernal tap tap tap. “What is the name of my brother's-son?”

And oh. Oh Mahal. His son. He had a son. He had a child. A child he would never see grow into their mastery. A child who Bilbo had raised and taught. A child that had left the rolling hills and traveled through Mordor .

“Frodo.” Thorin whispered the boy's name, desperately trying to imagine Bilbo's curls turned black, framing delicate features Thorin could barely trace. (His company had said Frodo was a mirror of both him and his One, but Thorin couldn't see it. His memories were blurred from the pain and sickness of those final days and all he could see was a jumbled mixture of Fili and Kili's features pressed onto a hobbit's form. He loved the boy for all that he would never see him.)

Dis hummed. “A strong name for a hobbit.” She commented, her boots stilling as she transferred the energy to her knuckles rapping against the bench in an absent tempo. “Why is he not here?”

And oh his sister was cruel.

“Thorin.” She demanded, voice like a hammer blow. “Why are your boys not here ?”

It was only the fact the circlet was not his that kept Thorin from throwing it when slammed up to his feet. His sister was cruel. She was cruel and she had gone too far.

“They are not dwarrow!” Thorin bellowed, body shaking with frustration and rage even as he gently placed Bilbo's crown on the bench. “They are not dwarrow and the elves have claimed them!”

“We had first right!” Dis yelled back just as loud and angry. “You may have tricked the council of kings into thinking you were craft-wed, but you are no more craft-wed than I!”

“What do you want me to do!?” His hands twisted into fists and if he had not already torn apart his forge, his tools would have been flung against the wall. “Petitioning Mahal has never done a thing! Not regarding the Halls of the Dead! Our people are safe here, safe from the threat our very existence poses. Would you have me risk the eternity of our people for two hobbits and the high chance of oblivion?!”

Thorin's chest heaved and he threw his hands against the workbench with an all too loud thud. You could not die twice, but there were worse things than death. (That fact, Thorin knew very well.) To sit on the Council of Kings was to be aware how precarious the existence of their Halls were at any one moment. The elves had never made any secret of the contempt their Maker had for dwarrow, and Men were all too favored by the Valar. Mahal could not intercede on his children's behalf without risking their existence.

Thorin would not jeopardize his people. Even if he wanted to, he could not. Not after the mountain, after the Desolation and Smaug. He had seen, had lived through, the impacts of exile. And that had been with Mahal's silent backing. He could not risk the extinction of his people's very souls. Not even for his One.

“So instead you will leave your One and your heart-Son to the whims and cruelty of elves?” Dis spat. “Elves do not understand the fragility of mortality. They will not understand your boys.”

“I cannot risk our people!” The words were dragged out of him and his sister was cruel. She was cruel to make him face his choice. To acknowledge what he was doing and force the scars on his soul to ache and twist with every word.

Bilbo and Frodo would be alone for eternity. They would be cut off from their kin, separated from those who might understand them, and unable to escape. And Thorin could do nothing.

“You would not be the first!” Dis hissed, her hands suddenly clamping onto his shoulders and wrenching him up towards her.

Her gaze was furious but that was not what made Thorin pause. No. What made Thorin pause was the glint in her eye that she had only ever gotten after speaking to Nori. Dis had a secret and Thorin was not sure if could handle the chaos of such a thing.

“You are a Durin-son.”

Thorin blinked at her, nearly flinching away when her grin cut across her cheeks.

“We are of the blood of Durin. A dwarf who famously returns from the dead. ”

Faintly, Thorin realized he had sat back down in shock. Dis for her part had gone back to swinging her boots against the bench as she giggled. A terrifying sound in itself.

“Oh Thorin.” She sighed between her laughter. “Don't make me give you a Royal Decree. I can do that, you know, as your proxy.”

“I don't think it works like that.” Thorin muttered with numb lips.

Could he? Could he leave the Halls? Could he go towards the Halls of the Elves and burgle away his burglar and treasure? 

“Amad then.” Dis said with a forceful nod. “She scares them too much for anyone to say no.”

And well, mother would certainly make the retrieval of her lost heart-grandson a royal decree.

Mahal, he had a son.

“Please no.” Thorin begged, hoping against all hope Dis hadn't roped Amad into this plan before she had come down to his forge. (It was one thing to be sent out by his sister. It was another to be kicked out by his mother. )

“Too late!” A voice sang from the doorway. “Ink dried five minutes passed.”

Just this once, Thorin let his head thump against the workbench as his nephews snickered in the hall.

“It gets better laddie.” Balin continued over the gaffes from the company. “Your Amad went to your Grandmother. Who then went to the Consorts Council.” The only good thing about that reveal was that Dis fell silent in shock. Thorin meanwhile was wondering if it was possible to have a heart attack while already dead. “Who then decided that the Ringbearers deserved the right to choose their Halls of Rest. Because we all know that no one would choose the elves if they had another option. So they went to the Council of Kings and their proxies, and immediately decreed that somebody would have to go and present the option to the Ringbearers.” Balin finished with a flourish, a sealed roll of parchment waving through the air like an axe.

“So, we're going to go get Uncle Bilbo and Cousin Frodo.” Kili butt in, one hand twisting in the straps of a pack he held against his side. “You can come with us, or stay here. But, we're going.”

And oh by the burning forge, Dis was going to find a way to exterminate his soul just for that comment. (The last time Kili had said he was going on an Adventure, Thorin had gotten him killed. )

“We can't die twice, right Uncle?” Fili piped up, his own pack flung over his shoulder.

Dis was going to murder him.

“Oi.” Dwalin cut in, managing to freeze Dis’ reaction in its tracks. “Best mention the rest of it too.”

The boys winced as Ori stepped up behind them and gave them twin smacks to the back of their heads.

“Grandmother says Amad has to come with us this time.” Fili frantically threw out before Ori could smack him again. “Adad already packed her bag and wrote a letter so we could leave right away!”

The way Dis thawed at the mention of her husband was creepy. It also made Thorin want to scramble out of the way and hide until Dis stopped being sappy. (His little sister was not supposed to be sappy. It was weird and he greatly missed the days she decided all dwarrow men had cooties.) From the full body shudder his cousins gave, they agreed with Thorin.

“Well,” Dis clapped her hands together and jumped down from the bench. Walking up to her boys, she quickly gave each a quick tug on their braids and a pat on the cheek before taking her pack from one of the Urs. “Best grab your things quickly Thorin, or we'll leave without you! I have Auntie rights I have to attend to!”

And Mahal, if that thought didn't make Thorin scramble. Dis as a sister-in-law and an Aunt. Perhaps it was kinder to leave Bilbo and Frodo with the elves.

…***...

Far above the Halls of Mahal, in a workshop that the heat of a thousand forges could not reach, a missive landed on a workbench. The Valar were being summoned. A ring bearer was missing.

Taking up the missive, Mahal tucked it away into a pocket and stared at the door he had installed long ago when there had still been a touch of optimism in his heart. Back then, he had sought to hide his wife from the repercussions of his decisions. He had been hasty and callous. He had not listened and had not thought.

He had learned since then.

Seven times one of his children had picked the lock on the door. And seven times he had turned his gaze away and pretended to not notice when Durin slipped away to find his own path back to Arda.

Seven times he had allowed that lock to be picked.

The eighth time (this time), he propped open the door himself. Perhaps this time, someone would go into his Hall. Perhaps someone would come out.

Regardless, Mahal had been summoned and this time, nobody would stand alone. Not him and certainly not his wife. Mahal would not allow it.

Chapter Text

Everybody dies. This was the unshakable truth. Everybody dies.

For some reason, Frodo never expected death. Which was perhaps a bit naive of him. He had known this truth since that terrible afternoon all those years ago when he had come careening from his Uncle's study, pouting about having not been found in hide and seek, only to find his Uncle holding onto two wet cloaks and Bounder Proudfeet saying his goodbyes.

Everybody dies.

Frodo just hadn't thought Bilbo would have been one of them.

He wasn't sure what had woken him. It could have been the snap of a sail or the creak of a plank of wood. Could have been the ache in his hand or the ever present itch around his neck. Whatever the reason, Frodo had woken up and immediately snuck over to his Uncle's room.

He felt a bit like a naughty faunt, sneaking out of his bed and going to lurk in Bilbo's doorframe, eyes glued to the gentle rise and fall of his chest. It was a ritual Frodo had done since that first night. One hand on the door, the other wrapped around one of the many wooden toys from the nursery Uncle had made just for him when he was born. 

His favorite had been the king, but Uncle hadn't liked that one much. His eyes would crinkle and his jaw would set before he plastered on a smile and asked what game Frodo was playing. Frodo had adored the king, liked him for the black hair and painted blue eyes just like his own. But it had always made Uncle sad, and as a child, Frodo couldn't bear the sight. In the end, Frodo had learned to keep the king by his pillow, just beside the sketch of his parents Uncle Ori had made for their wedding. The two items guarding him as if they could protect him from the tragedies of the world.

Still, Frodo slipped out of his bed and went to his Uncle's door. No toy was in his hand, no sketch of his parents to bolster his courage. Both had been lost back during the separation of the Fellowship. When the Orcs stormed the camp Frodo had slipped away, terrified and determined. He had left and in his rush, he grabbed the wrong bag. It had been stupid to bring them with him, a folded paper and a small toy. Stupid and childish things that were unnecessary weight and burdens during the flight from the Shire and later out of Rivendell. Bringing them with him had been stupid.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Frodo wondered if his parents’ picture and his little guardian king had been forgotten in the bottom of the second boat. If perhaps Boromir, poor loyal and dead Boromir, had been given some measure of comfort in his send off. The two items Frodo had never before slept without, sent off with a man for his eternal rest. It was poetic.

(It was cruel.)

After the Fellowship, after those terrible moments with Sam and the call of the Ring. After waking up to the dizzying relief that Gandalf had lived, Frodo had sought out Bilbo. Had sat beside his uncle as he slowly recovered and listened to the same wandering stories Bilbo had told all throughout his childhood. Had sat there as Bilbo went from lucid to fogged and back again. Had sat there as his hand ached and his neck itched, and realized he understood his Uncle far too well.

Elrond didn’t like it when Frodo said that. Didn’t like it when Frodo absently stirred his tea and commented that he and his uncle were the ‘worst sort of addicts’. (If it hadn’t been for Sam. If it hadn’t been for Golem. Well… sometimes Frodo thought his Uncle was far stronger than anyone had given him credit. He at least had been able to walk away.)

Still, Frodo had gone to the door, had passed through and went to take his usual comfort of watching his Uncle’s breathing. It had become far too shallow these days and Frodo had given into the habit of counting his breaths. In and out. In and…

Frodo had not seen his parents’ bodies. Uncle had been adamant about that. He had been at the funeral. He had helped make their shrouds, bury them, and placed flowers over their graves. But he had not seen his parents dead. At the time he had raged and screamed. He had thrown his uncle’s things and tossed his bedroom more than once.

Then Aunt Lobelia had passed and uncle Otho followed soon after. Those had been his first real deaths. Deaths where he had seen the bodies and helped prep them for their deliverance to the Gardens. (He hadn’t needed to, Uncle Bilbo had made sure of that, but Aunt Lobelia had named Bilbo as her Gardener in her Will. There had been a joke in there somewhere about spoons, but Frodo hadn’t understood it. Never really understood any of it to be honest. But Uncle had been so sad and Frodo had never been able to leave his uncle alone when those sorts of moods came around.)

The floor beneath his feet rocked with the steady and calming motions of the waves and Frodo stumbled into the room with the same unsteady feet he had when they had first set out to sea. His uncle’s chest was not rising and for the first time in years Bilbo’s face was slack and free from the scrunch of pain. 

Frodo stumbled beside the bed, knees hitting the floor as his hands scrambled towards his Uncle’s throat. Uncle had always had a too slow heartbeat. As a faunt, it had been soothing, a steady thing to listen to when his Uncle pulled him close and held him through his rages. As an adult, after the war, after the Shadow, the slow beat had terrified him. It reminded him of the slow beat of those who were dying, of the blank eyes and terrified faces he and Sam had seen when they snuck through the fighting and the ruins. (It reminded him of the drums in the deep.)

His fingers landed on his uncle’s pulse point. On his cold skin.

Everybody died.

Frodo just hadn’t expected his uncle to be one such death.

Turning his head, Frodo laid his cheek against his Uncle’s sheets and folded his hands into his Uncle’s. His uncle looked like he was at peace and Frodo wanted to be mad. He wanted to be angry. He had left with his Uncle for the Purelands, for the peaceful rest of the elves. He had left with his uncle.

He didn’t want to be alone.

(They really were the worst sort of addicts weren’t they? All jagged edges and cravings for a whisper that had done far too much damage for them to ever truly want the comfort it offered. But it was so much easier to sink into the Shadow. It was so much easier to ache for the comfort even as his body shook and his skin burned with the need.)

How could Frodo be his Uncle’s Gardener now? How was he supposed to send Bilbo to the Garden when they were headed to the Elven Haven? Would the rites work? Would the Green Lady ferry his soul to the Gardens or would uncle be sent back to the elves?

(Bilbo had promised when Frodo was a faunt that he would never be alone. That Bilbo would always come back for him, that he would stay until Frodo no longer needed him, even if it meant crossing mountains. Bilbo had never seemed frail, had never seemed small. But then there was the Ring and well…)

(Frodo didn’t blame Bilbo for leaving. He couldn’t blame him at all.)

(They really were the worst sort of addicts.)

…***...

“Good morning, my dear hobbits!” Gandalf cheerfully cried as he swept into the room in a whirl of white and colour.

Frodo wanted to shush him, to move his hands away from his uncle and gesture for silence. But what good would that do? Uncle wasn’t here. He hadn’t come back. Bilbo had promised.

(How was Frodo supposed to send him off to the Garden now?)

Behind him, Frodo could hear Gandalf stutter to a halt.

“Oh.” Said the Wizard. “Oh no.”

…***...

People were talking and walking in and out of the room as if it were tea time and they were mischievous faunts. It was loud and the noise was piercing. Couldn't they see that Uncle needed his rest?

Couldn't they see it?

Lord Elrond had come in at one point and Frodo had been tugged away from his perch. Instead of kneeling beside Bilbo Frodo had been placed in the corner of the room, half tucked beside Bilbo's desk. Someone had folded the blankets down and Frodo wanted to step up and straighten them back out. Uncle hadn't liked the extra weight on his calves, he had said it made his skin itch. Uncle didn’t have the strength to tug the blankets about as he once had, not when he had gathered up every extra blanket he could find to combat the cold sea air.

“Frodo.”

Uncle liked to have the blankets straightened and the fine fur of the pelt he had insisted be on every bed be slept in since before Frodo had gone to live with him, be tucked around his head and curled under his chin. Frodo had never understood that action, the fur had always made his nose itch.

“Frodo.”

By the Garden, what was Frodo supposed to do now? What was he…

“Frodo!”

Hands grabbed onto his upper arms and Frodo blinked, tearing his gaze away from the too still form on the bed. Before him was golden hair, half tangled and mused as if the elf had torn themselves from their cot in a hurry. Which was stupid considering it wasn’t as if anyone was going anywhere. They were on a boat.

(Frodo hated the water.)

(First had been his parents and then later there had been the orcs and Boromir. )

“Frodo.” Glorfindel whispered, a frown marring his brow.

Reaching up, Frodo went to smooth out the wrinkle, ignoring the red irritation that still marred the scarred tissue of his hand. Glory had stood by him for much of the last few years. Had rode out to the Shire when Frodo had sent word of razed earth and broken people. Had stood guard when the darkness became too much and the echoes of the Shadow seemed far too real. Glory had become a friend, someone who even now Frodo would not ignore.

“Don’t fret Glory.” Frodo whispered just as quietly, hesitant to take up too much space and room in the hustle and bustle that had broken out. “Uncle doesn’t like it when you hover.”

“Frodo.” Glory repeated, hands spasming on his arms. “Frodo, your Uncle has passed.”

“I know.” Frodo remarked, eyebrows shifting up as he stared at the elf. Glory had been spending far too much time with mortals lately, he was acting like a Man. “I found him.”

And Frodo did understand. He did. He just… he didn’t want to think about it. If he thought about it then he would have to worry about rites and Gardens and Frodo… Frodo couldn’t do it. Not now.

He was alone.

Frodo was the only hobbit left.

(Frodo had never been truly alone before. Not even in those dark days in Mordor. Not even in the end…)

“Oh Frodo.” Glory murmured as he pulled Frodo from his seat and into a firm hug.

Frodo was alone.

…***...

Glory doesn't let him roam too far. Well, actually that isn't quite true. Glory let Frodo roam as far across the ship as he wished, as long as the elf could follow him and keep him in sight. That wasn’t hard considering half the elven crew now stared at him like he was an excotic but leashed pet, and the remainder hardly dared to breathe around him in case he too died in the night. All of which added up to Frodo spending most of his time curled up on his bed, face tucked into the fur pelt Uncle had lugged around like a child's toy.

(The pelt didn't smell of his Uncle anymore. It didn't smell of freshly spilt ink and new parchment. It didn't smell of pipe weed or the harsher blend from the Blue Mountains. Instead the pelt smelled like salt and cold winds.)

(It still made Frodo’s nose itch.)

…***...

The moment the ship passed from Arda into the other Frodo felt it in his bones. Between one heartbeat and the next, the ache that had wrapped around his throat and curled into the nape of his neck, lightened.

And oh. Oh. Was this what Sam had meant when he said the world was kinder and softer than Frodo had ever imagined? There had been a weight that had been lifted when he had awoken in Rivendell and seen Gandalf and the rest. There had been an easing of his conscious when Strider had been crowned. The weight had come back when the Shire burned. When the world echoed and sang with the destruction of fire and ash.

Once, the residents of the Shire had feared and wept at the sight of frost and snow. Growing up, Frodo could remember Bilbo over stocking the pantry and the wood pile. The fields were relieved of their yield early, long before the frost. The winter cover crop and the seedlings were planted with the fear of early winter. Every year Bilbo had waited, hands on Sting when the solstice rolled around. The Shire held its breath for weeks, ears aching for the echoes of the Horn of Buckland.

The Shire had whispered of the Fell Winter. Later they had screamed of Razed Earth.

Stunned, Frodo looked down at his hands. They shook and trembled and Frodo could do little but stare as the irritation on his hand began to fade into the same tanned tone as the rest of his skin. The scar tissue was obvious, but the pain he had always associated with Golem’s bite dulled into practically nothing.

“Gandalf and Elrond believe your Uncle may be re-embodied on the ship, or even in the pure lands.” Glory said, hand falling onto Frodo's shoulder.

Staring down in awe, Frodo flexed his hand and marveled at the ease of the movement. “No.” He said absently, one finger tracing the scar tissue. “No, I don't think so.”

“Oh?”

Frodo hummed, one hand reaching up to check the raw welts and burns that circled his neck. To his surprise, his touch didn't burn or cause his skin to break open with speckles of blood. Without a mirror, Frodo couldn't tell for sure, but he almost thought the skin had become a mess of scars. (Scars he could deal with, even if it would cause the elves to stare. Scars meant he had survived. Scars meant it was all over.) By Yavanna, the ache from the blade on Weathertop had dulled to nothing.

“He'd have gone to the Garden.” Frodo explained as he leaned against the railing and looked out across the water, silently enjoying the lack of pain and the relief in his bones. (If he hadn’t leant forward, he’d probably have collapsed to his knees from the sudden lack of weight.)

“The Garden?” Glory gently asked. “What Garden?”

Frodo smirked as he ducked his head. Bilbo had been right in the end, Big Folk really didn't know anything about Hobbits.

“The Garden.” Frodo confirmed, hands rubbing together as he fought the urge to spiral into what-ifs and the anxiety of Bilbo not having a proper Gardener. “Our Lady made us a land, much like the Shire. A place of relaxation and contentment, much like your purelands and the forge for the dwarrow.”

The silence stretched out and Frodo almost pushed away and wandered down to the kitchen to escape it.

“Uncle hated the idea of the Garden.” Frodo mused with a chuckle. “He never said it out loud of course. He was the Gardener for my parents and he'd never say anything bad about the Garden to me. I half think that's the whole reason he got on the ship. He just couldn't stand the thought of being locked behind the Garden Gates with all our relatives for the rest of eternity.”

Frodo tilted his head back and stared up at the rigging. Had he been a faunt, he might have crawled all over the ropes and sails. But he was an adult, worn down and weary. There was little point in acting like a child now. “I guess his luck ran out.”

“The gates are locked?” Glory asked, a hint of something unreadable in his tone.

“Of course.” Frodo responded, a wry grin twisting across his face. “You’ve been to the far shores before, don’t you know this?”

For all the world, it appeared as if Glory were about to break out into laughter. Then the elf nodded his head in agreement and looked around. Confused, Frodo did the same, noting that the other elves had given enough room to appear as if they could not hear them. With the breeze that kicked around the deck, Frodo wasn’t sure if they could, now that he thought of it.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Glory whispered as he dropped down onto the deck, folding up enough that his head was just level with Frodo’s shoulder.

And Yavanna, by the Green Lady herself, Frodo felt a mischievous grin cut across his face as he leaned towards the elf. (There hadn't been much to laugh about lately, even once Frodo had begun to sit beside Bilbo and listen to his stories. Sometimes it felt all the laughter and joy had been lost somewhere back in the Shire. Lost somewhere between handing off the keys to Bagend and finding Black Riders on the paths.)

“I never made it all the way to the shores.” Glory whispered, teeth barred in an utterly Tookish grin. “Got swept up just before my feet would have hit the ground and instead got dropped in front of the Valar.”

Frodo's eyes went wide.

Glory chuckled, hands spreading out in a gesture that would have meant ‘what can you do’ had he been mortal. “Turns out if you keep pestering the gods when they're trying to ask you questions, you get kicked from the eternal rest you've been promised.”

There was a certain amount of glee that came from that admission, Frodo realized as he leaned a touch closer. Glorfindel, Lord of the Golden Flower and Slayer of the Balrog, had been kicked out of the purelands.

“Next thing I knew, I was standing in front of my own grave.” Glory commented with the same flippedness one might have when talking about the weather. “Never really had the guts to find out if my body was still in the stone. Then one thing led to another and it turns out the Valar really didn't want me coming back around anytime soon. Which meant I got some interesting upgrades to my fea.”

Which of course meant that Glorfindel didn't know how the Havens were set up, Frodo realized with a chuckle. It also meant that technically Glory wasn't an emissary of the Valar at all. A couple ages of deceptions were about to come crashing down and from the look on Glory's face, he was looking forward to it.

Although, if he really had been kicked out of the elven Haven because he was too annoying, then Frodo shouldn't have been too surprised. Glory was probably going to revel in the fall out.

“All that to say, I don’t think your Uncle is coming back, Frodo.” Glory said, head tilting to the side like a bird and his hands coming up to trap his in a firm grip. “And I know you agree with me. But there is a precedent for annoying the Valar. And somehow I think your Uncle is even more stubborn than I.”

Frodo couldn’t help but snicker, his hands gripping onto the elf’s fingers as tightly as he dared. “Lord Elrond did say you and Uncle got along far too well.”

“I don’t think he’d have gone to your Garden.” Glory said, with a gentle squeeze.

Frodo gave the elf a small smile, teeth carefully hidden away even as he felt his eyes crinkle. “Oh Glory, you think he would have had a choice?”

…***...

It is Gandalf that finds him just before landfall. In any other circumstances, Frodo would have had the time of his life ribbing the old man. Over the course of the journey Gandalf had begun to relax. The years practically fell away from his face the further out to sea they made it, and eventually Frodo found that ‘old man’ was a descriptor that no longer fit. No, Gandalf had the appearance of an elf, timeless and ageless, half away between young man and a weathered adult.

It suited him.

“My dear Frodo.” Gandalf said, oh so gentle and kind. “I am so sorry.”

“Yeah.” Frodo murmured as he watched Elrond finish wrapping the burial shroud around Bilbo’s body. “I know.”

The shroud was wrong. It was not a hobbit shroud, blocked in with flowers and leaves. It was not stitched together by the family and made of patches from the deceased’s clothing and the closest family members. It was not a shroud made for a hobbit to send a seed to the Garden. The shroud was white and gauzy, made from the flowing robes of the elven sailors. 

Bilbo would have loved it. He would have loved that he was laid to rest in the traveling cloaks of his friends and sent off with a patch of a furred pelt. He would have loved the lack of hobbitish custom and the attempt to acknowledge his life from his friends. He would have loved it.

Frodo hated it.

(He could remember the way his Uncle had helped him through the stitches for his parents’ burial. Uncle had sat him on his lap, his hands practically dwarfing his own, and helped him thread the needle. Then they had sat there in the study, and stitched part of Frodo’s favourite flannel pajama shirt onto a patch of Bilbo’s nightgown. Frodo’s stitches had been uneven and the thread he had picked stood out against the material. He hated the look of it, the appearance of anything less than perfect for his parents.)

(When he had sent his parents off, Frodo could remember seeing bold flowers curved around his shaky stitches. Later he would find out that Bilbo had stayed up night after night until the blooms looked like they were growing out from the vine that was Frodo’s stitches. Later he would find out that Bilbo had gone to all their cousins and bartered for bits of the cloth that had been reused time and time again. All the bits that had made up Prim’s first festival dress and the rags that had once a upon a time been Drogo’s party shirt when he had become the Baggins Heir.)

The fact that the strip that tied the shroud together was made from Frodo’s favourite shirt and blocked in by the only leaves Frodo had ever learned to stitch did not help. (Bilbo was being sent off in elven clothes, wrapped in the only pelt Frodo had been able to let go of, and tied together by Frodo’s last hug and oak leaves.)

“There is a tree.” Gandalf said, hand falling heavy on Frodo’s shoulder. “It is just above a ridge that overlooks the sea. It is no Party Tree, but perhaps it would suit?”

Frodo was the Gardener, wasn’t he? He had to make these decisions, otherwise the elves would put him to rest via the sea. And Bilbo had always hated the cold, had hated the waters and the frost. No, he wouldn’t have wanted the waters. No matter how much he had flaunted his lack of proper hobbit traditions.

Mad Baggins had always been a bit too much Took, and Frodo had loved him for it. Both of the Baggins boys, both of them too Tookish for the rest of the clan, but loved by both sides anyway. The Brandybucks were just a shade off from the Tooks anyway. Bilbo deserved to rest in the cradle of the Shire. He deserved to rest in the roots of their people, held close in the warmth of the roots.

Frodo was the Gardener now.

“It’ll suit.” Frodo said, hands reaching out to push Elrond away before the last tie was made. Elrond might have had the right to help send Bilbo off, but that was his Uncle. Bilbo was his to lay to rest and the final tie, the one over the heart, that one was for family. Bilbo had never married and Frodo was the closest he had ever come to having a child. (Sometimes, just sometimes, Frodo wondered if his father would have minded him calling Bilbo Da. ) That last tie was Frodo’s rite. 

…***...

Frodo leaves the ship first, his hands clenched in his cloak. Had they been in the Shire, he would have borne a litter on his shoulders, his cousins by his side, one at each corner. There would have been dances and songs pipping on the wind. But the Shire is long behind him and instead Gandalf, Elrond, and Glory carry Bilbo from the ship. Frodo too short to attempt to hold his own corner.

Whatever greeting had been planned on the shores of the purelands, stalled in the face of the obvious funeral procession. If Frodo had the choice, he’d have disembarked with his hood up and his face covered in shadow. But that was not the hobbit way.

As it stood, he could barely hum the songs that joined the walk. There was no chance that he could do the festival dances. Bilbo had led him through each iteration, had walked him through the dances for his parents and taught him the march for Lobelia’s rest. What use was there for Frodo to dance if there was no one here to acknowledge his intent?

(What use was there to dance if Bilbo was not there with him?)

Gandalf might know their rites, but he was an istari. He was no hobbit and Frodo would never ask him to act like one.

His feet hit the ground and Frodo knew the moment the elves registered what was going on. He knows the moment the body in the shroud becomes known and that there is no second hobbit stepping onto the shore. He knows and he can’t help but hold the gaze of the two women in the front of the procession.

Lady Galadriel stood before him, her gaze just as heavy as it had been all that time ago in Lothlorein. However, this time there was no itch on the side of his brain, no gentle fingers that probed through his thoughts and recoiled at the shadow in his brain. No, this time there were no words exchanged at all. Her gaze flickered from his own to the litter, and then back again. And for the second time in his existence, Frodo was submitted to a look of pity from the White Witch of the Woods.

At the same time, the woman beside her who was nearly as tall and just as ethereal, slipped forward. For a moment it seemed the shore held its breath, even the gentle lapping of the sea halting as the woman bridged the gap. It took a moment for Frodo to place her, to see more than just the long blond hair and the same beauty that was the marker of all elves. But then he saw the smile, the open arms, the sheer excitement radiating from her and the puzzle pieces snapped together. He had seen the woman before, in hidden pictures and small desktop paintings.

Elrond’s sons were the spitting image of their mother, Frodo mused as he took in the woman who had once been the Lady of Rivendell.

There was joy on her face and all at once, Frodo realized he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t greet her. He couldn’t bear to watch that joy become tarnished. Turning around, Frodo watched as Glory wordlessly took Elrond’s place, his hands shifting to bear the weight of the litter with ease. Elrond wasted no time, his usual decorum dropped as he rushed down the plank.

Elrond was no mortal, (by choice mind you) but Frodo could see the hints of his ancestry in his actions. He could see the lack of grace, the short stumble as he hit the ground, the quick turn towards the woman. The way his face lit up and the years dripped from his frame as if just the sight of her could revitalize him.

(Elrond was no mortal, but Frodo thought of all the elves in attendance, he might be the closest.)

Celebrian caught him and the two of them spun around in an embrace that had been a long time coming. And by the Green Lady, Frodo couldn’t watch this. He shouldn’t watch this. (He couldn’t look away.)

Celebrian broke away first, a smile spread wide across her face as she turned towards the boats. It wasn’t hard to know what she was looking for, who she was looking for. Her sons, her daughter, the children she had left behind when she had sailed. The age of elves was over, if there was ever to be a time when her family would be in one place, this would be it.

Time seemed to restart then, the lapping of the waves unbearably loud in the silence of the moment. The Lady faltered, her gaze flickering between the ship and her husband in quickly increasing confusion.

(A daughter who chose mortality, sons who stayed behind to live the rest of their sister’s mortal life at her side. A brother who had long since passed into the halls of Men. A family broken and scattered across havens and left to fumble around the gaps that would never be filled.)

Frodo turned away.

Behind him, the lady of the valley, daughter of the white witch, and grandmother of a lineage of kings, began to wail.

…***...

On the ridge, beneath the tree, Bilbo was laid to rest. The soil felt foreign beneath his feet and Frodo stared down at the packed earth with something that might have been shock if he weren’t so numb.

“Are you sure you don’t want a marker?” Glory asked, voice low and reverent for the occasion. “I know Men prefer to…”

“We are not Men.” Frodo cut across, his hands fumbling for the tie to his cloak. “That is not our way.”

Besides, Frodo didn’t think he would ever forget where he had buried his Uncle. He didn’t think he could forget even if he tried. His arms and back ached from the labour of digging out the grave. Glory had offered to do the task, to take on the burden, but Frodo hadn’t been able to let the elf do the whole task. Gandalf might have insisted on helping, but whatever expression had been on his face was enough to chase Gandalf from the ridge before he could even attempt to grab a shovel.

“Get up.” Frodo ordered as he was seized with a sudden need to see some sort of hobbitish custom. To prove that his heritage was important, that he wasn’t about to be brushed aside because he was the only hobbit in the pureland.

Thankfully, Glory stood without question as Frodo threw his cloak to the ground and beckoned the elf to stand beside him at the foot of Bilbo’s grave.

“Our dances,” Frodo attempted to explain, his head tilted away from the elf and stuck on the sea far below the ridge, “are not meant to be danced alone. Every dance has a partner, every song is a duet. Our songs can be sung alone, but they are not meant to be. Our rites are for the community. Our rituals are for the people. Our faith may be a private thing, but hobbits are not meant to be alone. ”

“What do you need, Frodo?” Glory asked, still infuriatingly gentle.

“I can’t dance for him.” Frodo gasped, his hands folding across his stomach as he leaned forward with a sob. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t! I can’t send him off, and what kind of Gardener does that make me?”

There was a burning behind his eyes and for a moment, Frodo looked down at the grave and saw two patches of overturned earth instead of one. For a moment, he saw two graves and Bilbo’s hand extended with that soft patience he had always harboured for Frodo. For a moment, Frodo could see Bilbo’s hand tugging his own, fingers so much larger and far more calloused, stained with ink and marked with pin pricks from quick embroidery. For a moment, the world spun around him and the faint strains of music hit his ears as Bilbo led him in the opening moves of the first dance.

Bilbo had promised to never leave him alone.

He had promised.

“I just buried my father.” Frodo gasped out, the palms of his hands scrubbing at the tears that had begun to drip across his cheeks. “And I never told him that he was my dad.”

“Oh Frodo.” Glory whispered, hand falling heavy on his shoulder.

Frodo was grateful the elf didn’t try to tell him it was alright. That Bilbo would have known. Because it wasn’t and he couldn’t have. Bilbo had never tried to be Frodo’s father, had never tried to take Drogo’s place. But the fact of the matter was that Bilbo had tucked him in every night when he was a faunt. He had held Frodo through his misery and his rages. He had sent Frodo to the Tookish gatherings and taught him his letters and numbers.

He had declared Frodo his heir but not his son. And Frodo had never found the words to explain that Papa and Dad, could be two different things. That many people could hold the title of father. That family was what you made it, not what you were born into. (But all of that was unhobbitish kind of thoughts, and perhaps Bilbo knew anyway. Because the elder Baggins was far too unhobbitish and had always stared out towards the East wherever Frodo had dared to play with the toy of the dwarrow king.)

(Perhaps Bilbo had known, but they had never spoken the words to each other. And standing over Bilbo’s grave, Frodo found he regretted that more than almost anything else.)

“Can you take off your shoes?” Frodo managed to get out between hiccups and sobs. “There shouldn’t be shoes at a hobbit funeral.”

“Will you show me the dance?” Glory asked as he undid his laces and set aside his own cloak.

“Yeah.” Frodo breathed as he stood over his father’s grave. “Yeah, I think he’d have liked you dancing for him.”

…***...

Frodo wakes up to find himself curled into Glory’s side and half buried beneath both their cloaks. For a moment, he lays on the cusp of consciousness, nose twitching at the itch from the pelt he had woven over his shoulders. For a moment, he lays on the ground and dares to pretend.

Bilbo isn’t dead. Frodo isn’t alone. They hadn’t yet made it to shore.

Everything was fine.

“What will you do now?” Glory asked, his fingers dragging through Frodo’s scalp in the same motion that Bilbo had done since Frodo had been a babe. (Glory didn’t hit the right spot, didn’t do it exactly the same as Bilbo. Bilbo had dragged his picky down Frodo’s nose every sixth stroke, his thumb tracing the edge of his face right down to his chin.)

“I can’t stay.” Frodo declared, his mind still hazy from the sleep. 

How was he supposed to stay here, surrounded by the immortal and the ethereal while he remained stagnant, kept company with nothing but a grave? How was he to stay here, surrounded by families when he had none of his own?

Hobbits were not built to be alone, no matter what Bilbo had tried to prove in his travels. (Bilbo hadn’t fooled any hobbit worth their window box gardens. Bilbo might not have made his family in the Shire, but his revolving door of guests and continued travels proved that he had made a community for himself just the same. It might not have been a hobbitish one, but he had been Mad Baggins. Nobody had expected any different.)

“Where will you go?” Glory asked, his hand pausing at the nape of Frodo’s neck.

“The Garden.” Frodo answered without a thought, the haze of sleep slipping away from his bones far too quickly for his comfort. “I’ll go to the Garden to see my parents, all three of them. Maybe I’ll even see Aunt Lobelia. Might even find out what that spoon comment meant in her will.”

“Well,” Glory said, his voice lighting up with the sort of mischief that Frodo associated with Merry and Pippin on a good day. “It’s a good thing that the purelands are not gated, isn’t it?”

Quick as a flash, Frodo threw himself up to his feet and attempted to loom over the elf. “What?!”

Glory’s grin somehow grew even wider, his teeth bared and threatening to anyone who hadn’t caught his earlier tone. “Lady Galadriel stopped by while you were asleep and asked me a few questions, mostly regarding the fact that none of my family hadn’t seen me since they had last stepped foot on Arda.”

Frodo’s heart dropped.

“Oh Frodo, you never knew her when she was young. ” Glory crowed, eyes alight as he gestured to two packs that were propped up on his other side. “She thought the whole thing was ‘delightful’.”

Frodo could do nothing but blink, his mouth hanging open uselessly as he tried to find the words that could help him untangle this whole conversation.

“See, apparently there are no gates or borders around the purelands.” Glory said as he gestured to the land beyond the ridge. “No elf has ever left the haven. By choice mind you, but then, where would we go? Back to Arda? No, no that passage is closed to us. To the children of Mahal? No, they would not take kindly to our visits. And Men? Well, the halls of Men have long since been hidden from us and there are too few of us who have the urge to search them out.”

“You mean…” Frodo breathed, hope building in his chest.

Glory pulled himself up to his feet and grabbed at the larger pack, easily shrugging it onto his shoulders. “Nothing is stopping us from simply walking away.”

“You mean I can go home?” Frodo breathed, his hand hovering over the familiar pack on the ground. “I can go to the Garden?”

Something in Glory’s expression softened and he gave a quick nod before he lifted the pack and gently pushed it into Frodo’s hands. “Yes. You can go home.”

“What are we waiting for?” Frodo asked as he threw the pack on his back and began to scramble down the hill. “Best be on our way!”

Chapter Text

Greif could catch up with you in the oddest of moments and at the worst of times, Bilbo remembered as he watched Snapdragon giggle and bolt through the undergrowth. The only thing that kept Bilbo from panicking about losing the poor thing was the giggles he would hear just before a sharp little bundle of twig-like limbs would smack down onto his shoulder.

The dear was simply marvelous, a little thing that was directing him with the carelessness of a faunt and enough self awareness to know she could get away with it too. She was a manipulative little thing and Bilbo wanted to bundle her up and tell her all the best stories and poems.

Frodo would have loved…

Frodo….

Frodo would have loved her. His boy would have bounced up to him, hands held out gentle and flat, proudly showing off the little ‘fairy’ he had found. (All faunts called the strange things they found in the Shire ‘fairies’. The Old Took certainly hadn’t helped with that assumption with his wild tales in his old age, and the gods knew Bilbo proudly made the misunderstanding worse with his own bizarre stories.)

Frodo would have loved this. He would have spun around and around, eyes wide and face bright with joy. Frodo would have loved meeting the Ents. The boy always did enjoy walking BIlbo through his own stories.

Frodo would have loved this.

But Bilbo was dead. He was dead and Frodo still had a life to live. His boy still had adventures to embrace and a whole haven to wander. He had all the stories, legends, and history of Arda right at his fingertips, and there was no need for Frodo to worry about his old fool of an Uncle. His boy would be alright. He had no need to mourn his fool uncle.

Frodo had always had far more strength than Bilbo could muster.

“Well my dear, how much further do you think we have to walk?” Bilbo asked as he jumped over another log, still in awe over the fact his knees didn’t ache and his balance remained steady.

Snapdragon chittered and Bilbo couldn’t help but hum thoughtfully in response. He didn’t understand the dear, but the little buds that made up her hair bloomed whenever Bilbo ‘responded’ to her comments.

“A whole day’s walk!” Bilbo exclaimed, hand theatrically clenching over his heart. “Oh whatever shall I do? Thank the Valar, I have such a wonderful guide!”

There was a sharp pinch to the tip of Bilbo’s ear and it took everything he had not to reflexively smack at the sting.

“Less than a day? Oh how wonderful!” He amended quickly.

The little seedling patted his shoulder twice and then launched herself off his shoulder and onto the ground. Chittering something over her shoulder, she waved him off his current course and gestured to a small animal trail he would have missed if it weren’t for her direction. Seeing she had his attention, Snapdragon jumped onto the trail and bolted, her little giggles echoing strangely in the wood.

“Don’t go too far dear!” Bilbo called with a sharp whistle, relaxing when she immediately mimicked the sound.

He doubted there was anything that could hurt her here, but Frodo had been such a solemn child in the beginning and Bilbo couldn’t help but see him in the shadows of the seedling’s face. He had been so cautious and hesitant to let Bilbo leave his sight. Considering how the boy had come into his custody, BIlbo couldn’t blame him. Bilbo wouldn’t have blamed him regardless. He could remember the frost and the snow. He remembered making shaky stitches as his mother wailed and shook herself to pieces.

There had been too many dead for the adults to make the shrouds and there had been far too much work for the children to sit and contribute to the rituals as they should. Too many had been buried in shrouds that were donated quilts and sheets. Bilbo hadn’t wanted that for his father.

It was the first time he stayed up through the night and made a shroud, it would not be the last. Belladonna’s hands had been too frostbitten and shaken to help with the finer details, what with the bandages around her nimble fingers. So Bilbo had done it himself, eyes burning as he traced stitches from the family books and his mother’s trembling voice.

Later, much later, Bilbo hadn’t been able to let Prim and Drogo be buried in second hand quilts and poor stitches. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of the couple going into the ground unadorned. No matter that they had been headstrong and refused the help of the family in making their own little homestead. No matter that their relatives had taken what they thought was theirs by default before the bodies had even cooled. They had been so young and they hadn’t made an official will. And Bilbo had to make a choice.

He had to make a choice.

He remembered embroidering the shrouds for his parents. He could remember tearing apart treasured shirts from his mother’s hope chest, praying that he was gathering the right cloth to weave into her shroud.

The Shire had lost too much in such a short time. His grandparents had to bury their other children and grandchildren and Bilbo had tried so hard to stitch together the journeys his mother had so proudly spoken about. Grandfather had helped with that shroud as best he could, but it had been Bilbo that blocked in the edges. It had been Bilbo who made the measurements. It had been Bilbo who made the shrouds for both his parents.

His father had been wrapped in the cotton of Belladonna’s wedding dress and the cuffs of Bilbo’s favourite cardigan. There had been too much damage in the Shire for the Master Baggins to be buried with all the pomp he deserved, but Bilbo had stitched as much of the barren sheets that they could donate to make the rest of the shroud. He had done as much as he could. He knew his father wouldn’t have cared. That Bugno would have wanted the scent of his wife and the hug of his son if nothing else could be done.

That knowledge hadn’t helped when Bilbo shoveled the dirt over his father and his uncles. It hadn’t helped when he had held a wailing Drogo and promised he’d do what he could to his widowed Aunt.

Bilbo had been a tween. His mother was newly widowed. His cousin had lost his father in the same season. Yavanna knew Bilbo had tried. He had tried. All the tweens had picked up what they could and marched on, carrying their siblings and parents as best they could. As the earth under the Party Tree continued to be half frozen and too stirred up for the sod to grow as it should.

He had tried so hard.

He had watched Drogo grow up. Had helped guide him as best he could when his own father wasn’t there to advise him. Then Belladonna had died and Grandfather had swooped in and Bilbo had to make a choice. He had to make a choice. Decades later, that choice had brought him to the wedding of one Mr & Mrs Baggins-Brandybuck. (He had never been able to regret that choice.)

Then Bilbo went off and nearly got himself killed and well… Dwarrow’s didn’t use shrouds. They didn’t adorn their dead with the cloth of their family and the stitches of flowers and promises. They didn’t make shrouds and even if they did…Bilbo wouldn’t have been able to make three in the shadow of a heavy winter and a looming mountain.

Dwarrow didn’t make shrouds but Bilbo had been hired as a thief and a burglar. He didn’t care about his share. Hadn’t cared about the sting of banishment and barbed words and threats. He hadn’t cared, not when there had been three dead and more injured and no reason for him to stay in the east.

Bilbo had been hired to steal and if in those final days he had grown desperate and embroidered an oak leaf into a king’s collar and a lion and a smattering of stars into the hem of both his boys? Well, no one would know. And if his king’s well loved furred-coat had a patch cut from the trim, well there had been plenty of opportunity for that to have happened at any point in the journey. There was no proof that the furred strip sewn into Bilbo’s collar meant anything at all.

In the end those choices led him to holding little Frodo Baggins, a wee little thing that wailed as loudly as his father had as a faunt and held the same colouring as his Brandybuck mother. And then one afternoon BIlbo had opened his door to see a Bounder holding two cloaks and a little boy began screaming from his study.

And Bilbo had to make a choice.

The shrouds for his cousins were not made by their child alone. Bilbo couldn’t stand the thought. He led Frodo through the rituals, spoke all the words and made all the right gestures. Bilbo hadn’t been able to honour his dead the last time, but by the Green Lady it was going to happen properly this time.

BIlbo had made a choice. He made a choice and he did what needed to be done.

No one would have to make his shroud. No, that was not something Bilbo would wish on anyone. Not after having buried all his cousins and even some of their children. No one would need to bury Mad Baggins.

He had thought about it sometimes, on those mauldin days when Frodo had grown up enough to go galavanting around with the other faunts. He had thought about his shroud and what he would need. The fur patch had long since worn away but Balin had brought a bundle of furs with him on his way out to the Blue Mountains and Bilbo had convinced him to part with one. And he still had that dratted handkerchief from Bofur all those years ago. He had thought about it, about his dead and who he would want stitched into his shroud.

He would think about it, would gather out all the materials and lay it out over his desk. Then he would stare and the world would twist and Bilbo wouldn’t think about it anymore because there were simply far too many interesting pranks he could do and his most precious item was…

And well… Bilbo didn’t have a shroud. Would never have a hobbit shroud and that was his decision.

There was less work for Frodo in the end, he supposed.

His boy was better off without his fool of an uncle.

“Snapdragon!” Bilbo called with a sharp whistle as he tucked the wheat the entwife had given him under his arm. “Snapdragon, don’t you go too far! This hobbit isn’t a fast little sprite!”

From up ahead, Snapdragon chattered with laughter and Bilbo did his best not to think about a little shroud the size of a seedling. Grief could catch up with you at the oddest of times and Bilbo wanted nothing more than to pick up the little seedling and assure himself that she was in no pain. (There was cruelty in the world. BIlbo had held it in his pocket and on his mantel for decades. But it was one thing to know about darkness, and quite another to know that there was a child who would never grow, dancing about in the undergrowth with blacked roots and soot stained flowers.)

If he were smart, Bilbo would call the seedling back to him and task her with gathering acorns and other seeds and nuts. He would challenge the ent to gather up the ingredients needed to make a loaf of bread, and he would find a place to make camp. To gather the stones and supplies needed to make a small oven and grinders wheel.

If he were smart, he would call a break and allow himself to grieve as he went about the tedious tasks. He would make a loaf of bread and bring it to the Mother’s husband and he would plan out the necessary words to riddle his way into the halls. If he were smart, he would use his time wisely.

Bilbo never said he was a smart hobbit, just a stubborn one.

Stepping over another log, Bilbo flinched as something small bounced off his shoulder. Pausing, he stared down into the undergrowth as if he would be able to see what had hit him. Then Snapdragon dropped down onto his other shoulder and he reared back with a shout.

The mischievous little thing grinned up at him with thorny teeth and Bilbo reflexively brought his hand up to cradle her slender form as she tugged at one of his curls and pointed off in another direction.

And then they were off again. Snapdragon was still sitting on his shoulder and the forest of Yavanna’s fields and haven whispered around him as he walked. In all honesty, it was a bit like those walking holidays he had once taken. His little romps about the Shire, pack on his shoulders and little Frodo running every which way, his own little satchel packed with all the ‘important’ things. (There was a little toy king with blue eyes and a furred jacket that Bilbo pretended he didn’t know about. And sometimes, when he looked down to see the wooden doll clasped in the hands of a tiny faunt, Bilbo could pretend that they were all together. That the two of them were walking down to Bree to visit a traveling blacksmith and Frodo was off to see his impish older brothers.)

(Sometimes Bilbo could pretend.)

They plod on through the trees and Bilbo talks to Snapdragon whenever she deigns to sit on his shoulder or skip along beside him. Sometimes he sings his own poems and songs that he had written over the years, and other times he simply rambles. Long stretches of memory pour from his mouth and he tells her of embroidery and oak leaves, of muddy little faunt monsters sneaking into his smial, and how the world was so much brighter and better then he had ever imagined.

Some of it is lies, Bilbo never could resist telling a good story, no matter the truth of it. Some of it is true. Some of it are mixtures, lies and truth blending together until he has a woven throne of stories that he perches atop without fear.

It is in the middle of one such story that the trees begin to thin and BIlbo steps out from dense forest into green and golden fields. There is no distinct border, no ‘here’ and ‘there’ to point to, but there is a transition. There is a transition from world to world and perhaps the most notable thing is that Snapdragon jumps down from her perch on his shoulder and remains still in the grass, her eyes just brushing the top of the stalks.

Bilbo makes another five steps before he realizes the seedling isn’t moving, isn’t racing ahead or chattering to direct him to a new path. He makes it five steps and then he pauses, head turned over his shoulder and hand held out for the little creature to scurry back up to his shoulder.

The seedling doesn’t move.

And perhaps it is because he had just spent the last little while talking to the little thing, perhaps it is because he had raised Frodo and he now knows what refusal looks like on the face of a faunt. Perhaps it is because he is dead and he understands the tethers that can keep one moving even after their body is left to rot. Perhaps it is a bit of everything. But he knows.

Bilbo knows.

The seedling will not move from her makeshift haven. She will not leave the bonds of her people and travel into the edges of her Mother’s fields. She’ll not move another step.

Bilbo must continue on alone.

Bilbo had said goodbye to a great number of people. He has made too many shrouds and dug too many graves. He has left behind a world that held his people and his home. Saying goodbye is not new, it is not even old, it simply is.

It never gets any easier, not even when he is staring at a little entling with soot stained flowers and blackened roots.

He does not wave. She does not chatter. He lowers his hand, she raises hers. They pause. Bilbo smiles that same stupid smile he gave whenever the faunts successfully managed to raid the outlying farms for mushrooms and root vegetables. The seedling mimics him, thorny teeth sharp against the fragile grasses that wave around her form.

“Goodbye, Snapdragon.” Bilbo says to her with a little bow, unable to do such an action without thinking of two little boys greeting him in tandem.

In the grass the little form gives a fluttering bow in response, flowers spinning and twirling about her head as she stares back at him.

“Bye, Boggins!” The words are clumsy and untested, the sounds rolling into each other as a mouth unused to such sounds hisses them out.

And Bilbo?

Bilbo throws his head back and laughs.

…***...

Bilbo crests the hill and for a moment, he is thrown back to that day all those years ago on the carrock, staring out into the distance as a mountain broke through the haze of the air and became clear for all to see. He is thrown back to that day oh so long ago, when his king could barely stand with his ribs and Bilbo’s skin burned from the frantic touch of a panicked dwarf.

He is thrown back to that dreary walk and the cabin at the end of their journey. He is thrown back to the garden and the…

He had crowned a king in flowers in the shadow of the mountain. Had his cousins been there to see him, to acknowledge the flora he wove together, well… it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter the hours he had spent agonizing over his choices, the moments where he had compared his weave to that of his cousins and the festival designs. It didn’t matter, not when his king had made his thoughts perfectly clear a few moments after he had been crowned. It didn’t matter that Thorin had given him a crooked smile that showed off his slightly chipped teeth or that his braids had swung into the sunlight and the beads had glittered like butterfly wings.

It didn’t matter, but Bilbo had always been gifted at playing pretend.

He is thrown back into the past at the sight, and it takes everything Bilbo has not to turn back around and wander the Mother’s domain. Below him, in the valley of the mountain and a fair distance away from the runoff from the fields, sat a cottage. It was nothing like Beorn’s, utilitarian and homely only because of the gardens and the scenery that surrounded it. This cottage was a blend, a smial and a mountain, wood and stone, iron and vine. 

In Bilbo’s dreams, there had been a place like this. A perfectly blended home filled with the laughter of three faunts and over rambunctious friends who had no regard for blunted dinner knives. In Bilbo’s dreams there had been a place where he could smoke on the porch while his nephews tackled their Uncle with mock war cries. In his dreams there had been a desk for him to write at and the rasp of maintained blades echoing behind him. There was warmth and there were flowers decorated by stones and gems and it was perfect.

(What was a mountain but a family smial? What was a smial but a home underground?)

He was supposed to be headed towards the mountain. He was supposed to be heading towards the lady’s husband. He was supposed to be heading towards the dwarrow and their hidden halls. (There was a poetic parallel between the hidden halls and the hidden door he had once been tasked to find. It was poetic and if Bilbo were reading this as a story, he’d have gasped and crowed in delight.)

(Life wasn’t like a story but damn if there weren’t hints and themes threaded throughout.)

Bilbo was supposed to be headed towards the mountain, but perhaps he could say this cottage was on the way? A day or two (were there even days and nights here?) of wandering wouldn’t hurt anyone.

The ramble down the hill was far too long and also far too short. Bilbo’s hards brushed the grass and his feet tread atop the soil and every step he took closer to the cottage sent homesickness and want through his blood.

Once upon a time, he might have suggested building such a place. Once upon a time, if he weren’t a hobbit of the Shire and he wasn’t a king of the mountain. Once upon a time, where stories and fairytales were enough to send faunts to sleep.

Once…

He reached the front gate and for a moment, BIlbo’s hands stilled. There, in the garden, was a dwarf. He sat on a stone bench, boots heavy on the overturned soil of the vegetable garden below him, a pipe in his hand. The smoke that puffed out swirled into shapes that itched at Bilbo’s brain. Mountains and forges, hammers and tongs. Masterpieces of iron and handcrafts Bilbo could have spent an eternity studying and always finding new details. But that wasn’t what caught Bilbo’s attention.

No, what caught his attention was everything else. Those were Thorin’s eyes with Kili’s smile. Dori’s twisting and intricate braids with Nori’s twitching and searching fingers. Bombur’s cheeks with Golin’s pale flush. It was the little things, the parts and pieces of Bilbo’s old friends that washed over this dwarf, ever shifting and changing whenever Bilbo dared to blink.

Bilbo had known powerful people. He had known elves who were re-embodied, men who had worked themselves from the docks to a crown. Dwarrow who had gone from exile to warm hearths. Bilbo had known people.

Silently, Bilbo lifted the latch of the gate and walked into the garden. His feet stayed on the flagstones and he walked the last few feet of the path with a bundle of wheat in one hand and a solemn look on his face. (In all honesty, he hadn’t expected to actually meet the lady’s husband. Not that he was arguing, but who ever planned on meeting a god ? Not Bilbo, that was for sure.)

(Couldn’t be worse than hosting Lobelia, could it?)

“A gift from your wife, my lord.” Bilbo said, the wheat held out as he came to a stop beside the bench. “Sent from the yield of your eldest heartchildren to be made into a portion of a meal.”

If Bilbo didn’t know better, he’d have said Mahal jumped at his voice. The smoke from the pipe billowed out and pooled around Mahal's head and Bilbo half expected the smoke to continue forming pictures and scenes, instead it hung heavy, much like the smoke that had once trickled from Smaug’s mouth all those years ago.

“You,” the god grumbled, his voice rolling out with that same gravel undertone all the dwarrow seemed to carry. “You have made a lot of trouble for my wife.”

“Your son made a lot of trouble for me, my lord.” Bilbo sassed back, the acknowledgement that one couldn’t die twice making his tongue far looser than it should have been. “I believe we’re even.”

The forge-father hurmped, the smoke around his head dissipating as the god turned on the bench and stared down at Bilbo with an expression that would have made him cower had Bilbo not riddled dragons and browbeat a king.

“You’ve an iron spine, Took.” Mahal grumped, his teeth gnashing on the pipe.

Bilbo’s smile was wide and guileless. To the god’s credit, he did not seem lulled into a false sense of security like many of the elves and men Bilbo had met over the years.

The god reached out and slowly took the wheat from Bilbo’s hands, his eyes crinkling as he ran a gentle finger over the ridges of the grains. “It is gold.” 

“The best sort.” Bilbo cautiously agreed. (He had dealt with gold mad dwarrow before and that had been hard enough. To watch his friends, his king be swallowed by the obsession… Bilbo sometimes couldn’t tell if it was a blessing; he hardly remembered his own last days, when the precious had been anything and everything he craved.)

“My wife once brought me a crown made of this flower.” The god murmured as he delicately plucked a grain from the stalk and rolled it between his fingers, eyes narrowed in concentration. 

Bilbo’s mouth dropped open and it took everything he had to reach out and grasp the words that wanted to leave his tongue in a stranglehold. Instead, Bilbo nodded a few times and allowed a strained smile to cross his face.

The grain fell into the center of the god’s palm and he stared down at it as if the small thing held the secrets of the universe. “She stopped bringing me such creations, crafts made by her own hand that I would place on the upper shelves in her honour. My farmer wife gifting me with something that looked so similar to my own projects, but made entirely of her domain.”

Perhaps it was a good thing Bilbo had kept his mouth shut.

“Why did she stop?” Mahal asked, and truthfully, Bilbo did not think he was meant to hear such questions. “Her work was fleeting and I could not preserve it as it deserved.”

“Your heartchildren sent this bundle for your table.” BIlbo hedged, desperate to steer the god back to a conversation he understood. (Well, that was a lie. He understood the god’s comments just as well as any other conversation. But there were thoughts and ideas attached to such a conversation that he did not want to investigate. How own crown of flowers and leaves had been thoughtlessly abandoned by a dwarf he had thought the world of. His own offerings had been discarded and left to rot and Bilbo wanted to get into the god’s face and scream. To scream at the father of his… to scream at Thorin’s father and demand answers from a god that was so much like his son.)

“No.” Mahal barked, the wheat suddenly cradled to his chest as if Bilbo had enough daring to take it away from the divine. The god’s fist loosened slightly when Bilbo did not dart forward. “Can you make a crown from this?”

Well, yes, of course Bilbo could make a crown from the wheat! But what a paltry crown it would be! No flourish, no messages, no declarations. It would be a plain thing, something that faunts would make when learning the craft on the corner of the fields during harvest.

(But, perhaps that was not the point. Perhaps the message was in the intent, not the lack of colour and symbolism. Perhaps this crown would not be one of lack, but of extended hands and apologies. Perhaps this was not something he should scoff at, but instead take as intended.)

Taking a chance, Bilbo slipped closer and wiggled up onto the bench. Once he was situated, he reached out a hand and snagged a handful of the grasses beside the bench, carefully tugging them up from the ground.

“Would you like to learn, my lord?”

Chapter Text

Once Yavanna had stood on this ground and watched the ruling in horrified silence. She had been young and foolish and angry. And perhaps that was the thing that everyone had forgotten. Perhaps everyone had forgotten that she had been outspoken before the judgement had come down. She had fought and argued and pleaded. She had stood her ground and yet in the fall out, only her husband had been shamed.

Her heartchildren were forced into the darkness, without even the light her husband enjoyed when Yavanna managed to drag Mahal into her fields. Her heartchildren had been wronged and Yavanna had never quite forgiven Eru for his threats and ruling.

Her own children had been separated and burned. Her ents had wailed and screamed and Yavanna had been unable to answer them because of Eru’s judgement. And then her children were punished. Punished for her short sightedness and hope. 

Yavanna was angry.

And one did not anger a goddess of life when treading in the fields of the dead.

“I’ll not ask what you did.” Mandos whispered as he came to stand beside her. Below them stretched out the Court, the point in which their Havens met and merged. A meeting point and neutral territory for all.

Above them loomed Eru’s Hall, a spinning mix of creations and styles, a building like no other and utterly walled off from life and death. Yavanna hated it. Hated the way it echoed in her senses as an empty void even as it seemed to be draped with ivy and trees, a gift she had offered all that time ago when the world was yet new.

“That is, perhaps, for the best.” Vaire whispered, just as silent, as she stepped up beside her husband.

Yavanna couldn’t help but stiffen, her spine snapping into the steel her husband so favoured. She did not spend much time with her brethren, not since her children were burned so terribly, but Vaire had always made her wonder.

Varie the Weaver. She with the glassy eyes and the star-speckled-brow. Fingers twitching and threads twisting up into her hands even as she let others fade into the mists. She had silver sheers on her hip, made by Mahal upon her declaration of intent. Woven into her hair were dozens of pins and needles, made of metals and stones, resines and bones. Yavanna had seen her use them all, embroidering and stitching bits of her cloth together, even as she worked at weaving.

When they were young, it had been she who taught Yavanna how to twist together the flowers to make crowns. It had been she who helped Yavanna make her first crown, a gift to her maker of a husband. It had been she who had stood back and let Yavanna rage and rage and…

Yavanna had always wondered what she saw with those starry eyes and distant gazes. A goddess of the handcraft and the vision, of the future and of what is and what was.

There were no secrets from Varie and sometimes Yavanna wondered.

“The Shadeling will not get in trouble.” Yavanna stated, her jaw set even as she welcomed the Weaver.

“No.” Varie agreed, her hands for once dropping her threads completely as she folded her arms into Mandos’ waiting hold.

“As the Lady proclaims.” Mandos said dryly. Varie whacked his wrist in reprimand. “But Bingo Boggins. Really?”

“Hush and shush.” Varie whispered again, her head suddenly tilting to the side. “Best not say a word.”

“Oh?”

And oh, Yavanna did not want to look. She did not want to turn and see the younger, the sister she had left when she had secluded herself in her fields. Vana the Ever-Young. Her baby-faced sister, the young woman who still appeared to Yavanna as a little girl clad in white and flowers on the day of her wedding, oh so happy and kind.

Yavanna was angry, and she had not wanted that anger to touch the girl. Not now. Not ever. Not even after Vana had helped close the gates, to lock the Valar away from their children in Arda. (But Vana was young, would always be young, and she had been so hurt, so pained by the betrayal of… well. It didn’t matter anymore. Not now.)

“Yaya?” Vana breathed in astonishment. (And oh that hurt. That hurt, that her little sister would think Yavanna would not show her face to a gathering.) “You have left your seclusion?"

Over her head, Aldaron gave a slight smile, his gaze strained even as he leaned forward to rest his chin on Vana’s head. Yavanna did not look away from him. Couldn’t even if she had wanted to.

Aldaron the Great Rider and Hunter, the one who led the hunt against Melkor. It was only the fact he had wept just as bitterly as she when the seedlings had come back to her domain that had allowed him reentry into her fields. Aldaron had hunted and stalked, had brought his hounds and his Shadows into her forests and fields, walking side by side with her more energetic seedlings and teaching his pets and shadows how to hunt.

If they had not been locked away from the world, from Arda and their children, would the world have fallen to such madness? Aldaron, he who hunted and stalked, would he have been enough to help hold back the dark? Or would they have fallen anyway, lost to the whispers of the shadow and Melkor’s greed?

(No, to think such thoughts was where madness lay. If she began to think ‘what if’, then there would be no peace, no silence. There would just be loss and anger. And Yavanna was angry enough.)

Yavanna had not declared a seclusion, but her kin absolutely treated her as if she had. Could she blame them? When they had first come to her fields after, she had wept and wailed, screamed and raged. Vana had no need to see her like that. Aldaron had been chased from her haven until she had seen his tears. Yavanna had not declared a seclusion but there had been no need for words when the skies themselves had blackened over her domain in her fury.

“Vana! I’ve not seen you in an age!” Nessa called, breaking into the huddle and grabbing Vana in a sweeping twirl. Both women giggled and cried out, immediately throwing their arms about each other and stumbling over the ground.

Yavanna couldn’t help the wry grin that broke out at seeing the Dancer wrestle with Vana. Nessa’s movements were almost too quick to catch, her speech somehow even faster, and her call brought back memories of a fairer time.

“Well met, Tulkas.” Aldaron called as he reached out and grasped the Champion’s arm.

It was a treat to see Aldaron and Tulkas together. Aldaron with his hunting garb and Tulkas with his armour, their differences only highlighting their similarities. The Hunter and the Champion, apart and yet together, working towards the same goal. While Aldaron had hunted their foolish kin, it had been Tulkas who dove in, fists swinging. It was he who had brought the fight to a close, and he who had commanded the legions.

(He was a fool.)

“Well met!” Tulkas cried out with a booming laugh that echoed the delight of his wife. “But where are the others? Nessa delivered the messages as quick as lightning, yet I see some have dwadled in their timely appearance!”

“Not all of us are as quick as your wife.” Yavanna commented, quickly backing up as Nessa and Vana frolicked on past her, shrieking and teasing each other like children. They all knew that if Nessa wanted to catch Vana, she’d have done so in an instant. The Dancer was much too fast to let anyone get away from her, if she did not wish it.

Tulkas gave her a smile. “Pity.”

“Some of us prefer a more dignified approach.”

Yavanna was not the only one to jump, though Varie still kept that serene smile on her face as she turned towards their latest arrival. “Hello, my brother.”

Irmo inclined his head even as Mandos pulled him forward and into a hug. Varie may claim Irmo as her brother through both marriage and their similar domains, but it was Mandos who shared blood. Just as it was Mandos who hardly ever had the time to see his brother, even if he did send messages through Nessa. The lord of the dead begging gentle dreams for the weary souls.

There was a certain poetry between their domains, even if Yavanna could not understand the whole of them.

Este, for her part, seemed quiet content to slide up beside Yavanna and stay as far from the chaos as possible. Out of all the valar, Yavanna had seen Este the most. Este the Healer, the Grey Lady. She had tended to the seedlings and brought relief to the burns that had haunted her children’s bodies.

She still swung by on the odd occasion, and Yavanna had long since turned her head whenever she caught her ents wandering to the borders. (Healing was not always linear and Yavanna understood that better than most.)

“Still, some seem to have gotten lost!” Tulkas gwaffed as Nessa finally stopped chasing Vana and swung up to cling to his back.

“Shall we have a race?” Nessa slyly murmured, her eyes bright even as her robs glistened and twirled in her wake, always a heartbeat behind her movements.

“Lets!” Tulkas grinned at her over his shoulder.

Out of all of them, Tulkas was probably one of the few who could attempt to keep up with Nessa. Although Aldaron gave her a fair challenge on a good day.

“No.” Varie’s denial was sharp and Yavanna knew she wasn’t the only one to rear back at the tone. The Lady of Threads rarely spoke above a whisper and woe to those who attempted to push back against her. Especially with her husband by her side. “The rest of our kin await us at the Table. It would not do to keep them waiting.”

“Besides,” Varie continued, her glazed eyes turning to pin Yavanna in place. “Someone wishes to speak with you.”

…***...

Once upon a time, Yavanna had found a figure on a hill. She had known him, just as he had known her, but she had wanted to know more. Vana had been at her side, giggling and pointing, eyes wide and innocent in a way that they would never be in the future.

Once, Yavanna had crept closer, urged on by Varie’s whispers and the dares from her sister. Varie had told her of handcrafts, of how metal might be used like thread and cotton, smelted out of ores and woven into something new. Vana had mentioned how she had seen the other valar studying parts of Yavanna’s domain, seeing how the patterns and fractals in her flowers might be replicated in the sharpness of his metals.

She had spoken to him. Had asked what he was doing and what he might be looking for.

She had asked if he might need any help.

Then, as time rolled ever on, she had sought out Varie. She had learned how to fold the stems of her flowers and greenery, the ones that matched his gems and metals the best. She had made him a crown made of the only materials she knew how to manipulate.

And oh, how he had smiled.

…***...

She loved him.

…***...

(He had never crowned her back.)

…***...

He loved her.

…***...

These were the lies they told themselves.

…***...

Yavanna sat atop the hill and watched as her husband walked up the path. For once, his clothes were not stained with the soot of the forge and his hair was not tied back by the cloth strips he so favoured.

As he came closer, Yavanna was able to pick out smaller details. Like how the beads in his hair were made of wood, plainly varnished but beautifully etched with the flowers in their garden. He had made them long ago, back before the betrayal of Melkor. Before everything had fallen apart. The shirt he wore was not plain as she had thought, but was stitched with the mintheral thread he had gifted her and she had turned around to painstakingly embroidered his beloved fractals into the cloth.

To see him, was to see the claims of her domain, touched in metal, but her tokens all the same.

The tightness in her throat eased at the sight.

“Amralime.” Mahal greeted her, his hands held behind his back as he rocked on his heels.

She hadn’t wanted him to come, and foolishly, she had not thought he would. She had warned him, had told him in the vaguest of fashions that she had done something unforgivable. That for him to step out and stand beside her would mean devastation upon his domain.

Devastation upon his children.

(Her ents had crawled into her fields screaming and shaking, wood cracked and burnt to a charcoal. Their flowers had been plucked, their vines had been cut. They had crawled into her fields and Yavanna had been able to do little but rage. )

(She would never wish that pain on her husband.)

For a moment, they simply stared at each other, and Yavanna could not help but soften at the sight he made. Her husband had always cleaned up well, when he had bothered with such frivolous things outside of his own work. Even after all this time, he still had that boyish charm that had made her sneak up that hill all that time ago. He still had that quirk of a smile and craftsman’s hands.

She loved him.

“I have done something unforgivable.” Mahal said.

By all the flowers and the trees, she loved him.

“Oh?” It was a lie, it had to be a lie. She would always forgive him. She would always be there to wipe away his tears. He was soft, so much softer than her. He had not thought of what his impatience would cause, what damage he would wrought in his attempt to create life. Her creator of a husband, bound to his work table, forced to hide his children away from the light he so loved.

(Yavanna was angry. Mahal was resigned. )

(Perhaps that was what made the gap between them.)

“I love you.” Her husband said, plainly and unapologetic. There were no flowery words, no claims of poetry, no begging and no crying. But they had never been like that, had they? “And I fear I have been remiss in my actions.”

Her breath caught.

“Amralime.”

This wasn’t fair.

“Darling.”

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Yavanna.”

She hadn’t wanted him to be caught up in this.

“I made you think you couldn’t come to me in your hour of need.” Mahal said as he lowered himself to sit beside her. One of his hands reached out and folded around hers, and for a moment, Yavanna let herself go back to a different hill and a different scene. One where he had been sitting and she had been standing. A scene where she had lowered a crown of golden wheat and gemstone flowers onto his brow.

She loved him.

“I made you think that I would not stand by your side.”

For a moment, Yavanna let herself pretend.

“And that was cruel.”

His other hand drifted in front of her and all pretense was lost. There in his hand was a crown of wheat. The oats were brittle and missing, the stalks were bent and crooked. It was singularly the worst made flower crown she had ever seen .

She had never seen anything so gorgeous.

Swallowing thickly, Yavanna reached out and tentatively ran a finger gently over one of the stalks.

“There was a hobbit in our garden. A Took, I believe.” Mahal whispered into her hair as she took the crown from his hand and slipped her head onto his shoulder. Her fingers brushed against the wheat in her hands with a gentleness she usually reserved for the seedlings. When had they last sat like this, side by side and utterly content in each other’s company?

“An impossible vision of course, considering the locked gates.” Mahal continued, amusement colouring his tone. 

His hands folded over hers and had Yavanna not already been tucked into his side, she might have hidden away. Her fingers were scuffed and marred. Her nails were chipped and broken. The gates had been tougher than she expected, even if they had fallen in the end.

She would not regret her actions.

(She would not flinch when her husband picked up her hands and tutted over her wounds.)

(She would not flinch. )

“An impossibility indeed.” Yavanna agreed, her breath hitching.

They both pretended she had told the truth.

“You said you had done something foolish.” Her husband continued, the scratch of his beard rough against her temple.

 “I have.” Yavanna admitted after a moment. Her voice cracked in the middle and for a split second, she was back when the sentencing of shame had been declared on her heartchildren. Her husband’s dearest creations tossed aside like weeds, and Mahal had begged. He had begged on his hands and knees. 

Yavanna had been furious. She had been angry and devastated, and utterly shaking with rage. But there had been nothing she could do, not then. Not there.

“I know a thing or two about foolish actions.” Mahal murmured as he twisted to rest his forehead against her temple. “And I swore a promise that I would stand beside you. That I would hide nothing from you. That should even the Shadow fall across our domains, I would honour and stand with you in the battle.”

“You did.” Yavanna agreed, pleasantly surprised her voice didn’t shake.

“And yet, I have left you alone.” Mahal breathed, his hand coming up to cover her own. “And I cannot forgive myself for that. Will you let me stand by you? Will you let me guard your back?”

“We have been cruel to our children.” Yavanna gasped out, her hands trembling as she leaned further into her husband, desperately wishing she could borrow his strength. “We have been so cruel. ”

Bless him, Mahal understood what she meant. He understood the cruelty the decision of the valar had wrought on the people of Arda. Their children had suffered the consequences. Damn the Shadow and his ilk, but it had been the Valar that had caused the most damage and no one had seemed to realize it.

Their children, brought up in a world of strangeness and wonder, of beauty and awe. Where their cousins danced in the starlight and burrowed through the stone. Where their children gardened and hunted through the forests. None of them alone, none of them separate from each other. Cultures and people blended, children were born into households that held hands across the havens and domains. In life they were free, in death…

In death…

“If Eru will not unlock the gates,” Yavanna declared as she untangled herself from Mahal’s hold and climbed to feet. Her spine was of steel, her anger was born from charcoled forests, and her rage was stoked by the faces of her children as they snarled and fought the lock that kept them from their kin. “I will tear them down. ”

Mahal looked up at her as if she were the rarest of flowers and most tenacious of weeds. He looked up at her and in a movement that seemed much too smooth, he stood and gently pulled the flower crown from her hands. For a moment, her heart fell, the promise he had just made shattered into a thousand broken shards, but she paused.

She waited.

He looked at her like he had all that time ago on their wedding day. Ever so slowly, he leaned forward, the crown held in his hands as if it were the most precious of jewels, and he crowned her. The crown was crooked on her head and the corner of her vision was peppered with wilted oats, but it was the greatest thing she had ever seen.

“Amralime.” Mahal began gravely, one hand slipped down from the crown to cup her jaw. His thumb stroked her cheek and Yavanna wanted to weep, to laugh, to throw herself forward and melt into his embrace as she once had when they were young. “I know of a forge that has just the tools you will need.”

Chapter Text

“We have been cruel.”

Yavanna couldn’t help but close her eyes, an instinctive denial against the truth. She knew Nienna spoke the truth. Yavanna knew of the cruelty of her brethren. She knew it, lived it, breathed it . She had been saying the same thing for ages.

But when Nienna whispered of cruelty... When the Lady of Mercy stood before you and listed your sins. Well… that was another thing altogether.

Mahal’s grip on her wrist was grounding.

(It was not enough.)

“Oh Nienna.” Manwe said, his voice booming for all that their kin was well within hearing distance. “You and your tears.”

Yavanna wasn’t the only one who sucked in a breath at the king’s words. Nienna was the Pale Lady, the Weeping Woman, the Lady of Mercy. The Lady of Mourning. When no one would cry for you, would mourn you, would have empathy for you, it was she who would stand at your side. Este might heal you, but it was Nienna who would cry for you.

(It was she, out of all of them, who had cried for the betrayer. It was she who had borne the weight of the distorted song and dared to extend a hand in sympathy. It was she who had tried to bridge the gap.)

(In the end, all she had been left with were tears.)

The sunlight kissed the trails of tears on Nienna’s cheeks. When they were young, Nienna had never cried. She smiled and danced, second only to Nessa. When they were young and the song was new, her smile had lit up the world and Yavanna could just vaguely remember what her eyes had looked like without the distortion of tears and misery.

Whatever the colour her eyes had been, now one only saw red. Even the Valar could not escape the mark of misery.

“Manwe.” Varda said in sharp rebuke, the stars on her brow flashing as she tilted her head towards her husband. The lady of starlight, revered of the elves and dancer of the stars, was as cold as her title. (Yavanna nearly shivered in the cold absence of her famed gentleness.)

“I’ll not hear it.” Manwe spat, his spine rigid and his jaw set. “We have gone this route before. The people are content. The song is as it was meant to be.”

If Yavanna had not been toiling beside her children, helping mend charred lands and burnt limbs, she might have agreed. Her domain was a testament to the endless cycle, to the continuation of life. And often, the cycle required death. There was a certain amount of tolerable suffering. Fields needed to be tilled, plants needed to be shaped, herds required culling lest the population spiral out of control.

There was a delicate balance to life and death, and Yavanna knew it well.

But there was cruelty in excess, and Yavanna would not stand for it.

“The lady is correct.” The rumbling words came from the last Valar to the table, Ulmo. Ulmo, who dripped water and smiled with obsidian teeth, while his hand gripped the trident that rested against his shoulder. Ulmo, who was the only one to openly defy the King.

Mahal’s grip on her wrist tightened.

(Perhaps things had spiraled out of control a touch too quickly.)

(Perhaps things were exactly as they were meant to be.)

“No.” Manwe snarled, his fist striking the table to punctuate his statement as he threw himself up to his feet. “The song was altered once and we all know the consequences of such actions. I’ll not have it happen again!”

Mahal shifted beside her, his grip loosening fractionally as he leaned forward, his gaze turning from Manwe to his lady wife instead. “Twice.” Mahal corrected, his jaw tightening as their kin turned towards him in surprise. There was much to lose in reminding the King of her husband’s digression and they all knew it.

A whole people. A whole culture, wiped out by the reminder of one word.

(She loved him fiercely.)

(She loved her heart-children more. What if Manwe grew angry? What if Mandos was given orders he could not refuse? What if…)

(What if…)

Mahal, her fool of a husband, tilted his head up in defiance, his neck clearly barred for all to see. (For all to lunge at. For all to rip and tear and…)  “The song was altered twice. Once by him, and once by my own…”

Manwe swept the words away with an errant gesture, his annoyance for all to see. “Twice then.” He agreed dismissively. “And we all know how that turned out for you.”

Yes, children hidden away in the dark and a people shunned for their birth. Mahal had wanted to create, to give joy and the gift of creation to their song… He had wanted to help! And he was punished for it. Forced to stand aside and watch the suffering of his children. Forced to remain apart for fear that the consequences become worse.

Manwe was lucky Yavanna was not closer to him, otherwise the King might leave the table in pieces.

“By your own decree!” Nienna cried out, her voice rising as she shot to her feet.

Beside her, Vana hesitated, her hands worrying together as she tossed a look between the Pale Lady and her King. Part of Yavanna wanted to send her away, to protect her from the shouting and the anger. Vana the Ever-Young. The child of them all. Part of her wanted to tuck her younger sister into her side and whisper that everything would be ok. But Vanna had played her part. She had acted and helped close the gates, cutting the Valar away from their children. She had worked beside Nessa. She had made her own choices. They all had.

Now, they simply had to deal with the fall out.

“Nienna.” Vanna begged, her hands reaching out in supplication. “Nienna, sit down. Please.”

Varda made a sharp sound from beside her husband, her jeweled hands settling onto the table with a cold sort of grace that only highlighted Manwe’s anger. “Sit. Down.” The stars on her brow flashed with each bitten word.

Manwe sat.

Nienna followed a moment later.

Vana continued to wring her hands.

“Silence your tears.” Manwe barked. “There must be consequences.”

“You act in fear!” Nienna hissed, her fingers twisting into a mimicry of claws in the sleeves of her dress, the fabric bunching and crumpling under her anger. 

“And you wish to act in defiance!” Manwe slammed his chair back as he shot back up to his feet. “Need I remind you who maintains the balance?!”

The silence that fell was damning and Yavanna found herself turning her hand over to clasp back at Mahal’s grip. There was truth to the accusation. Eru had gifted the thread of the song to the brothers. Mahal, in his haste, had struck the wrong chord. The Betrayer had woven in disease and decay, distrust and greed. It was Manwe who had laboured to bring the song back into a symphony. It was Manwe who…

“I do.” Ulmo broke in, the butt of his trident striking against the dais with an echoing thud.

Manwe’s cheeks flushed red. Varda’s hand struck out to press firmly against Manwe’s arm. A warning and deterrent all at once.

Ulmo nodded to her and he too climbed to his feet, his trident both stabilising him and held at his side as a weapon. Yavanna had never felt the absence of her domain as she did under his shifting gaze. 

“I maintain the balance and the song.” Ulmo said. And while his tone lacked the threat Manwe had emitted from the moment the Valar had taken their seats, Ulmo seemed just as thunderous for the lack of apparent rage. “It is I who monitors the chorus and the chords. It is I who checks on the displaced notes and the winding threads.”

Yavanna couldn’t help but swallow when the Master of the Sea turned to look at her for a long moment. There was no way he knew of her plan. THere was no way he could have known what she had done, what chaos her deception had sown. Ulmo continued to stare her down for a long moment, and slowly, Mahal’s grip tightened, his face becoming chiseled with lines and tension. She hadn’t realized she held her breath until Ulmo’s attention had transferred to Vana, and then after a moment, Nessa.

“It seems only I dare to cross the gates and monitor our children.” Ulmo continued, head tilting with a dark sort of mirth when Manwe grumbled something unintelligible. “Although, perhaps it is better to say I am the only one who can. ”

It took considerable effort to smother her sudden mirth. One could not stop the tide, no more than one could stop death. But then, even Mandos had been bound to his halls by Manwe’s decree, forced to send out his children and shadows to do the work he had claimed as his own domain. Ulmo had hidden too deep, too far from Manwe’s far flung sight.

All life needed water, and Ulmo was there in every drop of it.

“We swore not to meddle in the affairs of our children.” Manwe growled, his teeth grinding as he spat the words.

“We swore not to walk Arda.” Ulmo corrected, his head tilting in mock consideration. “And as far as I am aware, any who have managed to slip the gates have not walked. Besides, remind me, who still speaks to the eagles?”

Manwe snarled, but it was Varda who grinned, sharp and cold, her stars twinkling in laughter on her brow. It seems the barb landed on the intended target with minimal impact on those on the fringe.

Irmo and Este shared a look, the Dreamer and the Gentle holding an entire conversation with only a tilt of the head and few scant gestures. Then Irmo leaned forward with a slight smirk, Este nodding along beside him. “As this is my domain, I would like to point out that Dreams do not touch the ground.”

“That is not to mention the Istari.” Nienna murmured, her gaze turning from the table to a point far in the distance. Yavanna was willing to bet if she followed the lady’s gaze, she would find Nienna’s favoured, the Gray Pilgrim. (Yavanna had a soft spot for the young Istari. The poor boy hadn’t wanted to go to Arda. But he had gone, and he had suffered far more than any of them had expected. He was a testament to Nienna’s choice, to her will. The Champion of the Lady of Mercy waited not for events to pass by him. Instead the boy went and meddled, stepping in where the Valar could not go.)

(Mahal’s own Champion had made his own choices and she would not greet him as she would her own Champion. She had not let his fea step into her fields. What Mahal would do to his wayward Champion was not her concern. He had punished him accordingly and if his fea managed to slip the chains and bonds Mahal placed on him…well, her eldest children harboured a deep-seated hatred towards their brethren who had destroyed their forests.) 

“We have wandered from our intention.” Manwe broke in, his face settled into a deliberately calm mask.

“Have we?” Ulmo mused as he settled back down into his chair, trident resting against his shoulder, his body sprawled and lax. “You have yet to inform us of why you summoned this council.”

That was true. Yavanna had walked down to the table with Mahal, just in time for Nienna to glide in, followed closely by Ulmo. Ulmo had barely had time to take his seat before Nienna had begun to throw her accusations around. Yavanna hadn’t had time to begin her own defence before the table had dissolved into bickering and a rather impressive display of unity against Manwe.

“Aye.” Manwe nodded sharply, his fingers steepling together as he peered down the table. “There are two matters of discussion.”

Yavanna briefly closed her eyes, teeth clenching together in preparation for the blow.

“The Eldest Ringbearer did not make it to the Purelands.”

And there it was.

“Purelands?” Vanna cast a bewildered look around the table, her gaze landing on Yavanna. There was honest confusion in her manner and she minutely shook her head as she tried to parse the problem into manageable bites. “I thought the ringbearers were to go to the Garden? They are Hobbits, Yaya’s children, are they not?”

“And yet.” Yavanna murmured, her head tilting to the side as she stared at her younger sister.

“The Ringbearers were given the honour of rest in the Purelands.” Manwe declared, pride colouring his tone.

Tulkas hissed in a breath, his hand striking the table. “You took them from the Garden?”

“He did not make it to the Garden.” Manwe corrected, missing the point by a league, even as the rest of their kin recoiled in horror and shock. “Additionally, there is a Took loose.”

This time it was Aldaron who shot Yavanna a look. Out of all of her kin (aside from Mandos of course), it was he who would know the implications of both a Took and a Ringbearer being outside of the Garden Gates. Which was to say, he would at least have the suspicion that the Took and the Ringbearer were one and the same.

“Oh?” Varie said, her glazed eyes never leaving the same empty spot of air she had been gazing at from the moment they had all taken their seats. The threads around her floated and twisted, colours changing quickly even as her fingers plucked strands from nowhere and everywhere. “Is this a problem?”

Yavanna nearly choked. Mahal did choke, his sputtering nearly covering Manwe’s loud “Yes!”

“Why?” Vana asked, her head tilting towards Mahal, even as her gaze never left Yavanna. Slowly, she licked her lips and tucked her hand into the open grasp of her husband. There was something of an apology in her gaze and Yavanna felt herself shaking her head slightly in warning.

Vana did not stop. “Yaya’s Garden is perfect.” There was a flush of warmth and pride that settled behind Yavanna’s ribs, but her sister was not yet done. “Why would you take her children away from her?”

“For their deeds, they deserved honour and rest.” Manwe declared with an arrogance that Yavanna wanted to claw from his face.

“If that were true then you would have sent them to Este.” Nienna scoffed, her hands waving away Manwe’s words even as her tone cut into the King.

“The Gates are shut!” Nessa cried out, her hands slamming onto the table as the fabric around her floated into the air like wings, flung every which way by her quick movements. “We shut the Gates. We shut them! And you cut two wounded souls from their Kin!”

“And yet a Took slipped the Gates!” Manwe rebutted, eyes flashing.

“Oh no.” Varie drawled softly, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth, a few threads around her cheeks unfurling and spinning away into thin air with vibrant colours and twisting patterns.. “How dreadful.”

“I think a few more than just one is loose.” Aldaron said, his gaze flitting from Yavanna to Manwe, settling upon the king with a dreadful sort of judgement.

Yavanna couldn’t help but flash him a smooth grin, the same sort that her sister used to slip the consequences of her mirth and pranks. Aldaron, to his credit, did not look surprised. Amused? Yes. Surprised? No.

“I met a lovely Took outside my forge.” Mahal said, his grip tightening on Yavanna’s hand in warning. Yavanna hardly spared him a glance. Bilbo had gone to their cottage, not the forge. But if her husband wanted to send Manwe to an empty hall and hundreds of thousands of dwarrow willing to fight a god, that was his choice.

Privately, she mourned her heart-children. They would fight to the last, as they had been since the moment of their birth. But they would not win. They could not win. And Yavanna would be forced to sow their remains into her fields, to offer their remains a chance to sink back into the cycle. Their death would kill her husband.

And by the fields and forges, the death of her heart-children would echo out into her domain.

(She had no doubt the Ents would march. )

“Out of curiosity, did you ever get around to Gating the Pure Lands?” Mandos asked, his gaze stuck somewhere over Yavanna’s shoulder. At this point, Yavanna was afraid to even ask what he might be looking at, let alone what his question might mean. Just because no one had looked at her yet for a Took being out and about, did not mean that she was safe from Manwe’s wrath.

“Why would the elves wish to leave?” Manwe asked in complete bewilderment.

Beside him, Varda giggled, her crown of stars swirling up and around her head in the same swooping gestures of young butterflies and wayward celestials.

“I am going to take that as a no. ” Mandos mused.

Down the table, Ulmo’s face split into a wide grin. “Need I remind you brother, there were a few souls we sent back. ”

Manwe tossed him a drool look. “And of them, it was only that one that would even attempt to slip the boundary!”

Yavanna perked up. Glorifindel, the only one who had annoyed Manwe so much that he was tossed out, spinning end over end until he skidded back onto Arda’s green fields. He had been a special sort of chaos and considering the fire he still had after defeating a Balrog, Yavanna could admire his drive.

She had also admired the fact he kept asking ‘why’, over and over like a bored Seedling. She had no doubt the elf knew exactly what he was doing. And had the timing of his demise been an age later, she might have even used him to further her own plan to throw open the gates. As it was, she was forced to cover her amusement and discretely support Varda in her manipulation to have the elf sent back to his kin in Arda.

“Remind me, husband. What was the lordling’s name?” Varda’s gaze had slipped to the same space Mandos had been eyeing and Yavanna fought the urge to turn and follow.

“Glory.” A little voice piped up, “I don’t think this is the Garden.”

Yavanna was not the only one who jumped up and spun towards the voice. However, she was the only one who stepped forward. Scrambling around her chair, she wondered if this was how her daughter Belladonna had felt when Yavanna had stopped by for a visit. The shock. The fear. The terror.

Feet sunk into the greenery that Yavanna had left in her wake, with a scarred and disfigured hand wrapped around the strap of a pack, was the littlest ringbearer.

Her son.

The boy looked at her with a pensive expression, his brows pinched together as he looked down at the green beneath his feet and then back up at the assembled Valar. Then, without skipping a beat, he turned to the much larger figure at his side and tugged urgently at the hem of his tunic. “Glory, I really don’t think this is the Garden.”

Glory, defeater of the Balrog, Manwe’s personal annoyance, tossed the assembled Valar a smile that was far too mortal. “Hello! Lovely to see you all again!”

Chapter Text

Big Folk had no common sense. Frodo knew this well. The whole war of the ring had proven that fact far more than anything else. Big Folk liked power. They valued unimportant things, things that were not hearth and home, food and drink, excellent harvest and family. Big Folk had no common sense.

Frodo just hadn’t thought the Valar would be Big Folk.

The Green Lady stood half out of her seat. Flowers bloomed at her bare feet and she wore the sensible garments of a hobbit. When Frodo looked at her, he saw the face of his mother, of his grandmothers, of Tooks, Bulges, Proudfeet, and Baggins. He saw the traits of the clans and his kin, all shifting about and blending until the Green Lady was everyone and no-one. (He saw the hints of vines in her hair and the blush of flowers in her cheeks, and Frodo wondered if this was what Pippin had meant when they spoke of the Ents. He wondered if the Ents had felt like home, like the Shire and the green.) He couldn’t help but give her a smile, reminded of pies cooling in the windows and the harvest festivals where the beer flowed freely and the laughter danced on the breeze.

Beside her was a dwarf. There was nothing he could be but a dwarf. He was Gimli, Bifur, and Bofur. All geometric lines and broad strokes of a brush. Frodo had never had the chance to know many dwarrow. Not outside of his toys anyway. But he had the feeling that if Frodo were to find his little toy king, that this dwarf would look exactly like him. Forge-worn, crooked nose and all.

He didn’t dare look at the other figures. At the Valar who sat at a table Frodo was sure he was never meant to find. Each figure seated was a mess of colour and shifting lines, abstract thoughts that suited them when the image solidified for a moment, and the slid away into a crazed mess of thoughts and migraines. Shuffling in place, Frodo absently tucked his chin into his cloak, nearly jerking back at the tickle of fur he had tucked into his collar while he and Glory were walking. His uncle’s fur. The tickle of the pelt still made him sneeze.

The lady’s lips twitched. One of the figures across from her cooed.

Frodo wanted to smile, but a sudden clap of sound made him jump.

“You!” The eagle-eyed being at the head of the table shouted, their hands slamming down onto with a crack of thunder.

Looking at the figure made Frodo’s head hurt. The lady beside him even more so. Stars and flashing light, golds and silvers dancing and darting about in the air around them, sparks flying when the colours collided.

“Me!” Glory agreed with a laugh and Frodo almost grumbled at the fact the elf appeared to have no problem looking upon the divine.

“You dare..!” The being continued, ignoring the twinkling of the stars beside them.

“I do!” Glory sounded absolutely delighted.

Frodo was pretty sure you couldn’t die twice but Glory was also a walking contradiction to that thought process, so perhaps…

“Hello.” Frodo said, eyes widening when the attention swung back towards him. This was a mistake. By the Lady this was a mistake. (Was that a step too far, to think such thoughts when standing in front of the Lady herself? Was he risking too much? Was he…)

They weren’t supposed to be here. He and Glory were meant to be leagues away from all this, breaking into the Garden or scaling the gate to the land of men. They weren’t supposed to be here, standing before the Valar and waiting for a judgment that just might mean Frodo could die twice.

His Lady appeared nervous, her gaze switching between him and Glory, before darting towards the being at the end of the table.

“Welcome, little ring-bearer.” A lady in gray whispered as she stood and glided around the table. For a moment, Frodo could not help but think of Lady Galadriel. Of the elf-woman with the still pools of water and the eyes that saw far too much. He could not help but think of the healers in the tents and the shaking hands of the widows. He could not help but think of ash and tears. “My herald always spoke kindly of you and your blood in his missives.”

“Herald?” Frodo whispered back, eyes widening as the lady sank to her knees before him.

“Gandalf.” Said the Gray Lady, the Lady of Mercy. Nienna. Her voice was thick with tears and Frodo had to resist the urge to reach up and wipe away the tracks down her face as he would have for any of his friends.

Of all the Valar aside from the Green Lady and her husband, she was the easiest to see, to understand. Like Gandalf had once been, she was clad in grey. That was not to say she was dressed simply, far from it. This close, Frodo could see the slightly off tone of two-toned floss etching its way across her bodice and down towards her hems. He could not read the words, for the embroidery was not just of simple flowers and vines, but of some script that looped and swung around as if it were singing across her body.

If he squinted, Frodo could almost see the script move.

Gandalf had not spoken of her much, instead preferring to listen to the antics of the Tooks and the adventures Bilbo still found himself thrust into on the odd occasion. But he had mentioned her to Frodo directly. Just once. When as a faunt, Frodo had asked why he was dressed in grey.

(He had never forgotten the answer.)

“He is a good friend.” The words felt small, short, impossibly tiny next to the full truth Frodo wanted to convey. Gandalf had indeed been a good friend, a mischievous one when the occasion called for it, but a friend nonetheless.

There were mornings Frodo still woke up screaming, hands out stretching and straining. There were moments when Frodo was convinced he had dreamed Gandalf’s reappearance, where the old man had stayed dead and Frodo had simply fallen prey to another dream from that ring. There were moments where all he could see was the flick and snap of a whip . Where all he saw was fire and all he heard were screams.

He didn’t know who had started screaming first. He didn’t even remember how the Fellowship had left Moria. One moment he had been reaching out, hands always falling too short, hands empty as one of his oldest friends, his Uncle’s friend, fell to his death. He did remember his hands scrambling in the rock and the ringing in his ears. He remembered looking at Sam and wondering who would be Gandalf’s Gardener. About who they would need to tell. About how they would send him to rest when there wasn’t even a body.

There had been no shroud to send with the man. There had been no grand embroidery and stitches. Had they been in the Shire, Frodo would have added a bit of the cloak and clothes Bilbo had always ensured stocked the cupboards of the man-sized room in the back of the smial. The shroud would have been gray, but it would have been dotted with the colours of the Tooks and the well wishes of the Baggins, and of Frodo’s stitches.

In the end, he, Merry, Pippin, and Sam had stitched leaves and shaky flowers onto a handkerchief and tossed it into the river in the way of Men and elves. It had seemed cruel to send the blessing up in smoke and fire considering the circumstances, even if the river had made Frodo’s throat thick and choked. Everything and everyone had been lost to the water, Frodo couldn’t help but think even all this time later. Fire burned and dotted the world in ash, thick and coying. But water? Water made the world drown…

“What brings you here, child?” The weeping woman asked, her head tilted to the side in a manner that would have seemed inquisitive if it were not for the voices that intertwined beneath her own, made of wails and sobs, quiet and loud all at once.

“Accident.” Frodo choked out, his own throat thick in sympathy to the tears. “We meant…”

There were a hundred different things he meant. He meant to say, to do, to think. But the long and the short of it was that he couldn’t have stayed in the elven haven, in the purelands. He couldn’t have stayed where his uncle’s body was laid to rest and he was the only one of his kind. He couldn’t have stayed in a place that was made of eternal grief.

He couldn’t stay.

So he left.

He had meant to go to the Garden, but anywhere but the purelands would have been acceptable as well.

“Why did you leave the Elven Haven?” Manwe thundered, his eyes wild. There were sparks flying around him and a breeze began to whip around Frodo’s ankles. The air grew heavy and Frodo could taste the weight of a storm on his tongue.

The god stared down at him and Frodo stared back. (There was very little that could intimidate him. Mordor had been enough to make him flinch. The anger of the Valar had little on the wrath of the Shadow.)

(Manwe’s displeasure was practically a picnic!)

“Husband.” Varda chided in the same tone the Old Took’s wife used to use.

Frodo couldn’t help but jump, his gaze flickering between Nienna and Yavanna, before twisting back towards Glory. Glory, who Frodo could not help but sourly note, appeared to be amused. 

“Well?” Manwe demanded.

“We left the haven?” Glory inquired, his head tilting and hand going to settle against his chin in a move that Frodo was sure the elf had learned from Merry. The gesture was far too mortal to be anything but deliberately learned.

“Yes! Annoyance, yes! You left the Haven!”

“There was no gate or boundary.” Frodo could not help but point out. Yavanna help him, he could not help it. He was his father’s son, both of them, and that meant he was wont to open his mouth and say the most unhelpful things. Things like ‘I will take the ring! Although, I do not know the way.” And ‘How hard could it be?’

(Mordor. The answer was Mordor.)

The assembled valar fell silent all at once, and a smile cut across the Green Lady’s face in a vicious line. Triumphantly, she made a gesture that Frodo could only interpret to mean ‘see?!’. 

“And where were you headed?” Varda asked, her crown of stars glittering and flying about her head like lanterns hung off the party tree. Vibrant, colourful, and warm.

“Somewhere.” Glory answered, his tone reverent, far too reverent for such a flippant response. But perhaps that was due to the woman who had spoken. Varda was his Lady, just as Yavanna was the Green Lady of the hobbits. Frodo could not begrudge Glory his reverence, even if it did make him want to hide his face in his hands.

“Anywhere.” Frodo croaked, throat still thick with tears and grief. “We were going anywhere.”

“If you are going anywhere, then you must make a choice. You may go back to the Purelands, or you must go to the Garden.” Manwe decreed, his voice booming and authoritative. Immediately there was an uproar. Glory’s face had gone dark and stormy, Lady Varda had shot up to her feet, Yavanna herself was being held back by her husband, and Frodo could hear nothing but shouts and sharp thuds of tools and weapons hitting the great table in disagreement.

Through it all, Nienna remained before him. Displeasure hung over her like a shroud, but she had not left him to flounder. Instead, she stared at him solemnly, and Frodo found his throat cleared by his anger.

“You are cruel!” The words burst out of his chest and Frodo found he did not care to pick them back up. He did not wish to snatch the sentiment back, even while the thin veneer of serenity cracked and shattered into a thousand pieces.

“You have been cruel!” He says again, hands curling into fists and eyes watering.

Once there had been a wooden toy king on his nightstand and flowers in the windowsill. There had been pies in the oven and tableware fit for Men tucked beside their daily cups and plates. Uncle had kept pantries of different spices, some far more exotic than others, and Frodo had grown up knowing the door to Bagend was open to all.

(Unless, of course, your name was Lobelia. But she often found a way through the window nonetheless.)

(Very little kept Aunt Lobelia out.)

Frodo had learned his Quenya letters at the knee of a ranger, his hamfisted child scrawl trailing along the bottom of patrol reports and supply requests. Bilbo had used these opportunities to teach Frodo his numbers as well, and as a child Frodo had been so pleased. A little faunt, barely bigger than a hedgebush seedling, tasked with counting out enough bedrolls and handpies for a whole pack of Rangers!

He learned his Western letters on the heels of Bilbo, ambling up and down the Shire with books and maps. He had never found any fairies in the woods, but he had met the Men of Bree and the odd hobbits who lived on the edges, which was just as good.

Frodo was a hobbit. Could never be anything but a hobbit. However, Frodo also cursed like a dwarf, sang like an elf, and counted like a ranger. He had grown up drowning in the stories of far flung kingdoms and buried kings. He had grown in the shadow of what could have been and lived with what was. His smial had been a revolving door of hobbit, dwarf, and man.

He had spent his whole life in the company of friends. He would not spend his death with the company of none. He would have them all, or he would have nothing.

“You are cruel.” Frodo spat, his hands shaking with a rage he had not known still beat in his chest. “I am a hobbit. And we are creatures of good food, warm hearths, and excellent company.”

Nienna stared down at him with a face of tears and pity. Quite suddenly, Frodo found he had no patience for it. For her. For them .

“We need all three to survive, to thrive. To deny us one, is to deny us all three.” Distantly, Frodo noted that there was a choked sob, a hastily cut off thing that he could hear a hundred echoes fall from. He only spoke the truth, but he supposed the Green Lady had known that already.

“Where are my friends?” Frodo demanded.

…***...

The gates of the dead were locked. Boromir had checked. They were imposing things, made of black steel and white bone. The lock was bigger than his own head. The gates themselves were near incomprehensible in size, and he had seen the drop of the bridge into the depths of Moria.

In some ways, Boromir thought finding the gates was inevitable. What else was he to do? He had woken up, sputtering and coughing, dragging himself out of the waters. (For a split second, before he had heard shouts on the shore and hands wrapping around his wrists, he had seen a face in the water. A grinning man with a beard that did not sway in the current. For a split second, he could have sworn that the men in the river had risen a finger to his lips. For a split second, Borormir thought he had seen a god. )

He did not like to think of those early days, of when he had choked and sputtered on the riverbed, half convinced that the Orcs were just around the corner. He did not like to think of those early days, when he had been shaking and screaming, begging to go back, to fix this. He did not like to think of those days.

(Sometimes, that was all he could remember.)

On the river bed had been men, his brother’s men. And with them, there were rangers. More had come every day, sputtering and coughing from the water, eyes haunted and stories overflowing from the banks about little halflings and battlelines that couldn’t be held.

If he were a better person, he’d have gone to the home of his people. He’d have tracked down the stories of a white city that knew no pain or hunger. He’d have left the banks of the river and gone to do his duty.

But he was not a good man.

And the ring had proved it.

So, instead he stayed with the rangers. He stayed with his brother’s men. He stayed and he walked the boundary and gathered what information he could. Two halflings, waifish and wan, one with scars about his neck and both with wide eyes and bodies that flinched at the noise of the battle.

(Had Borormir done that? Had he been the one to put the scars on little Frodo’s neck? He couldn’t remember, not clearly. He had been so sure that he could use the ring for good. But he wasn’t a good man, was he? No. No he was…)

Then, later, a story of a Lady of Rohan and a halfling in the service of the Steward.

(There was panic at that story. A fear that made Boromir pace and walk and scream at the river, at the face he had seen just before he had been pulled out. Which of the little ones was it? Merry? Pippin? Sam? Mandos forbid it was Frodo. )

If he were a better son, he’d have gone to the ghost of his city. He’d have tracked down the rumours of his father. (But the things he had heard. The whispers of madness and ash… He didn’t think he could do it. He didn’t think he could go back. Not now.)

(Not yet.)

Instead he stayed with the men who had pulled him from the river. He stayed with the rangers. He stayed with the man who looked far too much like the ranger Boromir had clashed with over and over and…

He said his name was Arathorn, the fifteenth chieftain of the Dundain, head of the rangers.

(“Would you tell me? Us?” The man, the ranger, Arathorn, asked, his hands entangled in the callused fingers of his wife. “Of our son? He keeps the company of so few who come to this land. And of those who do… I’ll not keep them from their families, or what little they can cobble together on this side of the gate.”)

Strider’s, Aragorn’s, Father .

(“Please,” Lady Gilraen whispered, her own worn scars that followed her into death stark against her arms. “Tell me of my boy.”)

And what was Boromir to do but explain it all?

…***...

Frodo curled into the pelt at his neck, the fur tickling at his nose. He could barely see through the tears in his eyes, could barely speak through the stone in his throat. Glory’s hands were on his shoulders and Frodo wanted to shrug him off, to throw himself forward and scream and wail like he had when his parents were planted in the Garden.

At the head of the table, Manwe looked unnerved.

Good.

Let the godking see the mortals he had been tasked to keep.

“Where is my family?” Frodo demanded.

…***...

Arathorn was a strange man. Stranger than his son, and stranger than Boromir had any ability to reconcile. He did not stay in one place for long and Boromir found this time to be one long nomadic journey. It was not unlike the extended patrols he had taken as a younger man, learning the lay of the land and earning the trust and respect of his men. Except this patrol never seemed to end.

The journey was a long looping thing, following the rivers and threading through the isolated villages that popped up as souls came into the Haven. If Boromir had been more of a traveling man, this would have been an adventure he could gladly travel out into eternity. But he wasn’t, and this was chafing.

But it was penance, even if Gilrean of all people said he had no need of it. (But he saw the scars that crossed her body just as easily as she noted the wounds that still littered his. Penance might not be needed, but damn if they weren’t good at it.)

(Some things haunted you even after death.)

“Why do you do this?” Boromir couldn’t help but ask one night as the sky glittered with stars and the fire threw sharp shadows over their camp. “Why walk a boundary that needs no protection?”

He hadn’t expected an answer, not really. Over the years he had found there was a certain amount of comfort from routine. Seasons still changed, people still farmed and haggled at markets, even if there was no longer any franticness to the motions. People were still people, and that was true no matter the village or settlement they based through.

Arathorn chewed at his pipe and tugged at a strap on his pack that never seemed to actually need repairs. When he spoke, his voice was still that jolting rumble that seemed more at ease in the winds and trees than in dead air and busy villages.

“I am of the Dundain.” He said, the words rolling over and over as if he were trying to make sense of a puzzle that should not exist. “We are long lived men. When I lived, had I been raised among men, my childhood friends would have been raising their children and maybe even grandchildren by the time I was ready to even think of my lovely Gilrean.”

Boromir could not help but pause, his mind racing to that moment all those years ago when Legolas had needled Aragorn for some slight he had performed as a child. He had thought it cruel back then, that his king had left mortality behind him for immortal companions, instead of growing to know his own people.

But perhaps the reverse was true as well.

The dundain would live long enough to see the birth of entire generations of men, but they would also be forced to see the death of each generation as well. And to be a child and to see that? To see your friends marrying off and growing old, even while you still learned your letters and practised in the training yard?

“We were separate from the villages of men, and now we are unable to see our elven companions.” Arathorn continued calmly, too calmly for the topic at hand. “We were born of both worlds and embraced by neither. So we patrol the gates, endlessly walking the boundaries as we always have.”

(There was cruelty in life.)

“My home,” Boromir offered a bit desperately, his head shaking in denial. “My city. We would welcome you. It is your seat!”

(There was no peaceful rest in death.)

Arathorn gave him a look that had once haunted the corner of Aragorn’s eyes. A bone deep and weary thing that was altogether too old and tired to continue the conversation any further. “We are in exile, child. There is no home for those of us who were born after our city burned.”

…***...

“What would you have us do?” Manwe demanded, his voice made of thunder and ice.

Held steady by Glory’s support, Frodo did not falter. “Not this. Never this.”

…***...

“My lords! My lords! Come quick!”

There was an urgency to the call that Boromir had not heard since the day he died. And that alone had him sprinting across the glade towards the trees beside Arathorn without a second thought.

One could not die twice.

There was little danger.

Neither of those points changed the fact something was wrong.

“Dusylin.” Arathorn called as both he and Boromir slid to a stop. “What is it?”

At first glance, Boromir could not see anything that might be cause for alarm. The morning fires had been put to ash. The camp had been set to rights. There was little trace they had been there at all. But then he saw the cluster of men, of rangers and wanderers, half circled around two lumps on the ground.

Small lumps.

Children.

They were always the worst to find. Most children appeared in the Haven among family, instantly placed among those who would support them and cherish them while they waited for their living kin to join them in death. The ones who did not, those were worse. Little souls with scars too big for their bodies and the inability to understand what had happened.

In the haven, families were more malleable than in life. It never took long for children to be placed in homes that would love them, but that knowledge never made the job easier.

(Some people, Boromir had realized, didn’t deserve to be parents.)

“Get Gilrean.” Arathorn barked, already sinking onto his heels and letting out a croon towards the lumps half hidden under cloaks. “It's alright, little ones. You’re okay now.”

“Get off, you lump!” Came a surprisingly mature shout, the bottom most body beginning to wriggle and squirm. “Get off me, or I’ll never give you Aunt Dottie’s tea ever again!”

“Why would I want her tea?” The response was deep, male, smooth with age and not cracking like one would expect from a child on the cusp of maturity. “Prim, I just want her wine. ”

The woman, Prim, on the bottom managed to shove the man off her. “Then why on the Lady’s Green Garden do you keep making me go for Elevensies?! Drogo Baggins, we’d have gotten better wine at supper!”

Prim climbed to her feet and quickly dusted off her skirts, quick little hands pulling at grass and twigs that had somehow ended up in the seams. She was short, and Boromir was in the perfect spot to see the tips of her pointed ears from beside a strip of cloth that held back curls he had only ever seen on one creature.

Or perhaps it was better to say he had only seen those curls in a drawing that he had found tucked into his shirt the day he had pulled himself out of the river. A drawing of two young hobbits, smiling side by side on their wedding day. (There was also a small toy, well loved and worn. A dwarf, although Boromir had no idea where it had come from. The paint had all but faded away, save for the blue of the eyes.)

A drawing that labeled them as Mr and Mrs Drogo and Prim Baggins.

“Hobbits?” Arathorn asked in complete and utter bewilderment.

“Baggins?” Boromir cried out. “Of Bagend?”

“Yes.” Prim absently snapped as she hauled her husband up and dusted him down. “And no. That was my cousin.”

“Frodo?” Boromir managed to choke out a bit desperately.

“That is my son.”

The world tilted and spun, and all Boromir could see was the woman’s upturned face. Her son had the same haphazard grin, he realized a bit distantly. He also had the exact same head of curls, and it was a bit startling to see his friend’s face on another person.

Swallowing thickly, Boromir reached into his pocket and pulled out the picture. Over time it had become creased and smudged, the finer details washing out, but identifiable still. Holding out the paper, Boromir fought to keep his voice steady, the scars on his back and shoulders aching something fierce.

“I think,” he said slowly as Prim took the paper in curiosity, “that you and I have something to discuss.”

Chapter Text

“We are lost.” Dis called out, her voice flat.

If Thorin were to turn around, he knew he would see her standing with her arms crossed and head tilted ‘just so. If she were feeling particularly petulant, she would also have shrunk her visage to that of a pebble, a call back to those years on the road when she had yanked at his belt and ordered him to give her the map.

“It is not exactly like we have a map, Dis.” Thorin tossed over his shoulder, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as the boys went sprawling down the hill, whooping all the while. At least they hadn’t lost their humour.

“Do we even know where we’re going?” Dis shot back. Silence fell for a moment and Thorin just about echoed the rough housing of the boys when he saw that Dwalin was staring up at the sky, shoulders shaking and his lips pressed together in a firm line. Before he could do more then take a step towards Dwalin, Dis muttered a quick…“Hold on.”

Beside him, Balin grimaced. “Forget bringing you to Erbor, we should have brought her. She’d have marched up to Smaug and made him regret being born just using her tongue, let alone her axe when he wouldn’t listen.”

Thorin kindly didn’t mention that he had tried to get her to go. One of them had to stay back in the Blue Mountains and Thorin had offered in a roundabout way to stop wandering if she wished to go. But the look Dis had given him…The glance she had made to Vili’s mantle… She wouldn’t have left her One, no matter that he was long dead. And Thorin could not ask her to go.

Up ahead, Dis had marched up to the boys and yanked them both up by the ears, hissing something that had them hunkering down and slinking away from her the moment she let them go. She stared after them for a moment and then turned back towards Thorin, her hands thrown up in the air in exasperation. “We’re still lost!”

“Well.” Thorin muttered, a nerve below his eye twitching ever so slightly, “We made it out of the mountain.”

Which had been a feat. They had climbed for what felt like days, tracking down whispers and stories of Durin that had never made it to Arda. Whispers of how Durin would haunt the upper halls, always returning to his forge, one of the original seven. A forge for each of the seven fathers.

Whispers about how Durin’s forge had always been set apart from the rest, tucked away and secluded. A soul that was scarred and worn, limping with wounds no one would dare to ask after. (Thorin could empathize. His own leg ached something fierce on the best of days, and there were still the burns on his wrists and the bruise on his cheek. And that had been after one lifetime, he couldn’t imagine the scars left on a dwarf titled Deathless.)

It had taken the order from the Council of Kings and the Consort’s word that allowed them through the upper Halls. Loyalty to the Seven followed every dwarf to their death and beyond. Those who stood guard on the upper halls did so out of a loyalty Thorin could not imagine, a bond between guard and lord that had surpassed both time and death. If there were ever any dwarrow that deserved peace, it was these Seven, and few dared to try and break their earned rest.

But ‘few’ did not mean ‘all’.

There had been the urge to stop, to leave the guarded gates and doors. To leave the hallowed halls and return to their own floor. But that had been fleeting, and Thorin had been haunted by the image of a hobbit with his eyes and Bilbo’s curls. He had been haunted by the thought of a pebble with dead eyes and thin cheeks. He had been haunted by the stories Golin and Bofur had painted, of a boy who had done the unimaginable.

Thorin had already failed his…he had failed Bilbo. He would not fail his heartson.

So they had passed through the doors, the first of any dwarrow to do so who were not the guard or the Seven. They were guided to the entrance of a forge marked with the maker’s mark that had become Thorin’s family crest.

Thorin had never been one for history. There had been little time for such frivolous lessons when his people were starving. He knew his stories, his origin and his family line. He knew enough to teach the boys when Balin faltered in some of the more familial retellings, but he did not know his Deep Lore. He did not know what would have been taught to him when he came of age, brought to the deep mines and lectured by his father. He had come of age on a battlefield, his brother dead, his father missing, and a deed-name heavy on his shoulders.

Thorin had never cared for history, but even he could not deny the sheer wonder of Durin’s forge. Had there been time (he had eternity, but there was never enough time, was there?) he would have wandered and marveled at the scenes carved into the walls. He would have traced the trees and the lines of names. He would have gawked at the master pieces on the bench and even cried over the rejects in the scrap bin. (Thorin was a tinker, a repairman. He fixed what others broke, and he knew styles and many techniques. To look at the scrap was to see a level of skill he knew far surpassed his own.) But there hadn’t been time, and so they had left.

They left the forge of their father and walked out to see the first sky any of them had seen in decades.

(The boys had cried. Thorin had pretended not to notice, but they had shed tears at the light and the blue overhead. How could they not? They were not born under a mountain deep enough to block out the sun. They were Durinsons born under the sky…they had never known a life without one. In death, they had no choice.)

“Mahal.” Balin cursed, his fingers curling around the bottom of his beard and giving it a sharp -but absent- tug. “Do you remember trying to get out of the Shire? That place was a maze. ”

“Didn’t get much better over the years!” Bofur cut in as he ambled down the incline. “I could have spent most of me life in that place, and I’d still have to get one of ‘er pebbles to guide me to the market! I kept ending back up at the Party Tree, no matter which way I ambled.”

“That doesn’t help us right now, Bo.” Bombur tsked as he slid down a rough patch of gravel. “Maze or not, we still have to figure out where we should wander in Eternity. ”

“It’s just a bigger maze!” Bofur shot back, a delighted grin spreading across his face as he reached down to pick up one of the rocks. Somehow, the dwarf had managed to grab a beer mug from the Halls before they had left. How it wasn’t empty yet, Thorin didn’t know. Holding his cup high, Bofur jiggled the rock in his free hand and then chucked it sharply at his Uncle.

Who caught the rock. Without looking.

“You’re in for it now.” Bombur airly commented, plucking the cup from Bofur’s hand as he went sprinting by, Bifur on his heels. “Best just let him catch you!”

He then reached out and tipped the mug upside-down, letting the contents flow freely onto the mountainside. First there was a beer, foaming and glistening in the sun. Then the stream turned into a wine, red and fruity. Then a stout…and possibly an ale…

Then a beer again.

Bombur tipped the cup upright and looked into its depths. “Huh.”

“Is that normal here?” Golin asked, his voice thick with awe instead of the general disbelief Thorin was trying to fight through. “Because I know Bofur had signed up with the Company ‘cause he was promised all the beer he could drink, but I feel like that is a bit excessive.”

“You? Excessive? With drink?” Oin asked sharply, both hands going to grip his brother’s shoulders. “Are you feeling alright? Your vision, is it steady?”

“Oh lay off!” Golin barked, swatting at his brother

“Trust Bofur to find a magical cup with free flowing drink in the afterlife.” Nori laughed as he swiped the mug and hiked it up in a mockery of a toast. “To Bo! The only idiot who could be genius enough to bring along the essentials on this journey!”

“We don’t need to eat.” Thorin couldn’t help but blurt out, still stuck on the fact Bofur had managed to hold onto such an item in the Halls of Mahal without being mobbed by his cousins and neighbours. “Or drink.”

“No.” Dori agreed as he reached over and snagged the mug before Nori could take his celebratory taste. Hoisting it high, he held one hand out to stop his brother from taking the mug back, and took his own long swig. “But sure as the mine is deep, it takes the edge off. As well as the headache.”

“What headache?” Oin asked sharply.

The boys, and Ori, went careening by, screaming and biting at each other as they slipped and slid down the mountainside. Dis, from the looks of things, had half turned back towards the mountain and was visibly calculating the time and effort it would take to walk back to the Halls.

“That one.” Dori grinned, relaxed in a way he had never been in life.

“We’re still lost!” Dis shouted. 

“We haven’t gone far enough to be lost!” Thorin hollered back. “‘Sides, how about you figure out which way we should go then!”

“Siblings.” Dwalin clicked his tongue in a mocking ‘tsk’.

Ever so slowly, Balin reached over and promptly shoved his brother, laughing uproariously when Dwalin toppled over and quickly gained ground tumbling down the incline. Thorin couldn’t help but give Balin a drawl look.

“He deserved it.” Balin defended, hands thrown up in exasperation. “‘Sides, it’s not like we could do that to your sister!”

“I heard that!” Dis’ voice was suddenly far closer than Thorin was comfortable with and from the look on Balin’s face, he agreed.

“Run?” Balin suggested, a wide grin splitting across his face as he gestured down the mountainside.

For a moment, Thorin could only struggle to breathe, to hold onto what little air was in his lungs. Balin had always been sly, far too tricky and mischievous by half. But after the Desolation, the fire, the smoke, the loss… He had never come back from it all. Thorin could just barely remember his older cousin as he once was, before the grief weighed them all down and his hair had turned white.

(Stress, Dwalin had once whispered over a flagon of ale. None of their family had ever lost the colour in their hair or beards. The grey that dotted through Thorin’s own braids was testament to the hard life he had gone through, but grey was a far cry from white. )

“Run.” Thorin agreed with a slight grin, the echoes of a long ago jaunt through mountain halls crying in his ears.

…***...

“The havens are not meant to be shared.” Manwe said, one of his eyes twitching.

Frodo was proud of that reaction, typically it took at least two other hobbits and five more minutes to provoke big folk into such a physical response. Merry would be proud.

“You are not listening!” Frodo cried. His shoulders were alight with pinpricks of pain, the result of Glory’s fingers digging too tight. “We were born into a world that held our cousins and siblings. We were born into a world that would never allow us to be alone.”

One of the Valar made a choking sound, a half strangled thing that reminded Frodo of the dying, of the gasping breaths that came from a prolonged death.

“Why are we alone?”

“That is the way of it.” Manwe said, his voice thundering and stern.

Frodo had heard such decrees before, from kings and leaders who thought might equalled right. He had not liked those people then, and he certainly did not like them now. “Why?” Frodo asked, deliberately keeping his voice steady and his face clear from the glower that kept threatening to mar his expression. “Who are you punishing? Us?” He gestured to himself and Glory, then threw a hand to the greater distance to encompass those he could not see for good measure. “Or are you punishing your kin?”

The Green Lady’s hands were wrapped around her husband’s, her face set into a hardness that Frodo had only even seen after the Great Fires. Whatever he had stumbled upon in that last statement, Frodo knew was important. The realization did not change the facts.

“It is not the Shadow that suffers from this divide!” Frodo cried out, hands clenched into fists. His scars ached. His fingers and knuckle throbbed. The skin around his neck was too tight and all he could feel was the phantom weight of a necklace that was not there.

“You do not understand!” Manwe growled, his hand hitting the table with a thud that made most of his kin recoil.

Frodo did not move. He did not speak. He barely breathed. When he had been young, Bilbo had coaxed him out of cubbies with stories. When he had been mourning, too far gone to play with Sam or toddle after his older cousins, Bilbo had given him toys. When he could not speak, Bilbo had given him words, riddles, and languages that were not his own. If he could not speak in his own tongue, Bilbo had been determined to give him another.

When Frodo had been afraid, Bilbo had given him the tools to overcome the fear.

Which was to say, Frodo knew fear.

He had grown up hand in hand with anxiety. Like a loyal companion, the dread had followed him to his adulthood and nipped at his heels for the entirety of his journey across Arda. There were scars Frodo carried, hidden beneath the redness around his neck and the stump of his finger.

“You’re afraid.” Frodo whispered, his voice breathy and incredulous. “Why are you afraid?”

“That,” Ulmo grumbled, his hands resting lightly on his weapons, “is an excellent question. What frightens you, brother?”

“Nothing.” Manwe did not look to his kin.

“Now, that is a lie.” Varda murmured, her hand reaching out to grasp her husband’s.

“I have another question.” Ulmo rumbled, his armour shifting and clanking as he leaned forward. For all that he bore the colour of life and growth, Frodo could not look at him without a sense of dread creeping up his spine. Ulmo the valar of the water, of the oceans and seas. The keeper of the rivers. Frodo looked to the god and saw dripping cloaks and shaking hands guiding childish stitches through the creation of a shroud. Water, Frodo knew, gave life but it just as easily took life away. Rain brought growth, but flooding brought destruction and death.

Life was all about cycles. 

What, Frodo couldn’t help but wonder, did it mean when a stagnant eternity controlled such phenomena?

“Earlier, you asked our kin to acknowledge who maintained the balance and the chords in the song.” Ulmo continued, one hand tapping absently on the table before him. Instead of a gentle pidder-patter of fingertips against the table surface, there was a slight echo of rainfall and the roar of water crashing against rocks with each tap. “Which is odd, since it is not your responsibility. It is mine.”

“Your point?” Manwe growled.

“Peace.” Ulmo smiled even as the sky above them darkened and the light dimmed. “Oh stop your temper tantrum, brother dearest. It does not suit you.”

The god shared a quick grin with the Gray Lady, her tears cutting across a viciously responding smile that could have been mistaken for a snarl. Frodo did not dare classify it as such, not when he wanted to keep his own throat intact.

“There must be consequences.” Varie said airily, threads snapping into place around her with a loud crack.

Glory’s hands tightened on his shoulders, and Frodo could not help but hiss in pain. At this point, he could not tell who Glory was attempting to restrain. Frodo, or himself.

“The song was entrusted to us by Eru.” Manwe snapped, a crack of thunder emphasizing his point. “When he who is lost changed the chords…”

At this, there was an instant uproar. The valar began to bicker, words and accusations flying back and forth so fast Frodo fought to keep the conversations straight. Which was to say nothing about the threads and lights that danced and snapped through the air, or the thunder rolling and echoing across the valley. Each being used their domains to back their points until Frodo wasn’t even sure there was a conversation taking place in any language he knew.

There was a rustle beside him and Frodo turned slightly to see Glory folding himself onto the ground, one hand still clenched onto his shoulder. The other was tightened into a pale knuckled fist, drips of Frodo’s blood marring the the elf’s pale skin.

What was one more scar? The crescents in his shoulders would simply blend into the rawness of his neck.

“They speak of the song that created Arda.” Glory whispered in reverence, his eyes darting between the valar. Frodo knew this of course, he had spent time in Rivendell, and Bilbo had always loved his poems and stories. You could not spend a week in the presence of an elf without hearing of the song, of learning of the stars and the gods they so revered.

But perhaps Glory needed to speak of the past, to understand what was before him. (What would it be like, Frodo couldn’t help but wonder, to know you were immortal, but had come face to face with something endless ?) “The Shadow was banished because of his modifications to the song. He wove in discordence. Manwe took it upon himself to keep the song ever flowing, the same melody and hymns that have echoed since the first note.”

Frodo paused, mouth half open. “That…That makes no sense.” he trailed off, nose scrunching up as he stared at Glory. The elf had recoiled, his head tilted strangely to the side, as if Frodo were the odd one here. But, Frodo knew the story. He knew the history. He had sat in the Hall of Fire and listened to the songs and the poems. He had whittled away long hours sitting beside his Uncle and flipping through tomes that were older than the Shire. No one had made mention of this.

Glory stared at him, head tilted and his gaze flicking between Frodo and the table. There was a strange expression on his face and Frodo knew if he were to turn back to the table, he would see something he didn’t like. So he didn’t. He kept his attention on Glory. He forced himself to ignore the Valar.

He ignored eternity and instead looked at his friend. “That makes no sense.” Frodo repeated, hands fisting at his side and his head bowed ever so slightly. “I am a hobbit. I know music and song.”

Glory twitched ever so slightly and Frodo could not help the wicked grin that spread across his face. No one had ever said that Bilbo’s poems were meant for anything but cups and drinking halls. Anyone who thought differently, obviously hadn’t heard Bilbo’s masterpieces, and instead had listened to his translations.

His uncle did not deserve the mystic the elves had so graciously laid upon him. (Half the time, Frodo was convinced Elrond was simply playing some grand prank that no one but he and Bilbo could understand. The other half, Frodo watched his twin sons and conceded that there was no two ways about it, Elrond was playing some game and everyone else was simply caught up in the fallout.)

“You can have repeating beats and rhythms.” Frodo conceded as he unclenched his fists and carefully brought his hands together to clap out a beat, alternating between a quick tempo and a slower but louder clap, carefully timing it into a repeating loop. “But it becomes boring.”

He paused, biting at his lip. “So, you add in other things. Other instruments,” he did a quick snap, using the motion as a herald for a tempo change. “Vocals. Timing, pacing, twists and turns. If you keep a song at the same note, at the same volume, the same pace, it's not music anymore, it's just noise.”

He then pulled his hands apart, letting his song fade into nothing. “And then, if you separate it, bring all the parts of the song and make them continue in their own little areas, you no longer have ‘one song’. You have components that have gone onto solo acts. But they lack the bolstering of the rest of the previous song. No change, no twists, just the same thing, but alone this time.”

Frodo brought his hands back together, twisting his fingers into a knotted mess and holding them up for Glory to see. “And, that doesn’t even mention the fact that the song is ever changing anyway. Each new ‘player’ brings their own ‘instrument’. They may fade into the chorus of their people, but that does not change the fact the song is not the same. ”

“And,” Frodo continued as he saw Glory shifting to cut in, “the simple act of existing causes you to impact the song. All of us, from God to ants, by existing you impact the song. Every life and death changes the components. If the song covers all of existence, life and death, Arda and your own domains, then you are in the song too. ”

Frodo turned away from Glory, his gaze passing the Gray Lady and cutting towards Manwe. The god was stoic, tense and crackling with a storm of wind and sparks. But, well, you couldn’t die twice and Frodo hadn't been smited for his insolence yet. “If you have truly been acting to keep the song as it was, unchanging and unmoving, then you have not listened to the song. ”

The god stared at him, and Frodo could not help but tilt his head ever so slightly. “Why are we alone?”

To his credit, did not look away. “You do not understand.”

Frodo spread his hands apart and held them out in supplication. “Then tell me.”

Chapter Text

“Would you have stayed with your burglar?” Dis’ voice floated from behind and Thorin knew from centuries of siblinghood, that he had to brace, or risk being tossed down the mountain.

Sure enough, Dis glomped onto his back. Her arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders, even as her chin dug pointedly into the edge of his collar bone. (There was no mistaking Dis was the younger sibling. Just as there was no mistaking that Thorin let her get away with much. Too much sometimes.) He dragged her forward a few more steps and Dis only sighed loudly into his ear.

“Thorin!” She grumbled.

“Dis.” Thorin mimicked.

“Would you have?” She pressed.

“Done what?”

Dis had never pulled her punches in her life. In her death, she had become even more vicious. Vil might still get gem-eyed at her spirit, but Thorin was her brother. And that meant he trusted next to nothing that came out of mouth. Not when she could and would certainly twist his words to her own gain. She was very much like their father, not that Thorin would ever tell her that. He liked staying out to the Healer’s domain.

“Stayed.” Dis repeated. “Would you have stayed?”

“I think,” Thorin mused as he watched the boys punch and kick at each other, the occasional yelp and snap of teeth highlighting the apparent victors of each scuffle. “I think the question should be, ‘would he have stayed with me?’”

“Duty.” Dis scoffed, her voice low in his ear. Thorin knew she didn't mean it. She didn't mean to throw away his responsibility like an errant thought. She didn't mean to cast aside his responsibility and heritage.

Dis had never liked the trappings of their blood.

(Sometimes Thorin wondered if that was his fault. He had tried to protect her, to shield her from the madness of their line. But he had been young and Dis had been yet younger. There had been smoke, the fire, and Grandfather… Thorin had tried. He had tried.)

Thorin would never have been able to leave the mountain, not after regaining it. (There was a part of him that still howled at the thought. The mountain had taken his grandfather and drove his father to his end. The mountain had killed his nephews. Had killed him. But he would have stayed. He would have stayed, forever rebuilding and strengthening the bonds between home and dwarrow. He would have stayed.)

(There had been no other option.)

(The question, of course, was if anyone-somone- would have stayed with him.)

“I'm sorry, Thor.” Dis whispered, sounding as young as she had that first time father had tasked him with disciplining her.

“I know.” Thorin whispered back. “I know.”

…***...

“We have a duty.” Manwe said, his gaze distant and flat, and Frodo doubted the godking was here. Instead the godking was probably off ‘hunting the fairies in the woods’, if Frodo were so bold as to use the hobbitish term.

“We have a duty.” He repeated.

“For what?” Frodo pressed, because he knew duty. He had walked with the Fellowship. He had carried the ring. If there was anything he understood, it was ‘duty’.

Manwe simply stared.

…***...

“You have a son.” Dis murmured as they began to stumble out onto far more even ground.

Thorin didn’t have a response for her. He had a son, a child out there in the world that was his. His heart-son. BIlbo would have been an excellent father. He had minded the boys on the journey and if things had been different…

If the world had been kinder…

“I am an Aunt.”

That statement made him stumble. In this world, in this land where there was no hunger, no pain that could not (would not) heal…what kind of aunt would his sister be? Thorin had never been anything but an authoritarian to his heart-sons. He had been brisk and mean, harsh. He could not afford to be anything else. Men did not like dwarrow, elves had left them to rot, and the other clans had turned their backs. Thorin had never had the chance to be anything but a warning.

He loved the boys, but there were decades where he wondered if they knew that.

But in this land…DIs did not have to worry about money. She did not have to worry about empty bellies and if they would have a roof over their heads. SHe would not have to sit bent over a rickety table beside Thorin, counting their pennies over and over and over… hoping for a different number at every count.

She wouldn’t have to worry.

Would his heart-son like her?

Would the boy like him?

Dis’ hand brushed against his, her pinky finger tangling around his own. Thorin couldn’t help the fond smile at the action. She had started it as a little girl, when she was tired at the endless events their father had dragged them through. She had been too proud to pout or cry, too proud to show any sort of ‘weakness’. But by tangling their pinkies, she could hold his hand and bury the action in her skirts and his belts. She could hide the action and retain her dignity.

“You have a son.” Dis breathed.

Thorin stopped, his hand flipping over to grab at her’s, and he yanked her close, his forehead thunking down onto the crown of her head. “I have three.” He breathed, his free hand coming up to tug gently at her lineage braid. (He should have never been anything more than an Uncle, but Vili had died and the boys were just pebbles…He had stepped up. He had taken them under his wing. He had done what was needed, what was necessary.)

“I’m sorry.” Dis whispered back. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“It was my duty.” He tugged her braid again, fingers seeking out her ‘mother’ braid, a bead for each child. It stung, sometimes, that he had never been given his own beads. Fili, of course, had been granted the heirship stones and clasps, but Thorin… Thorin was ‘uncle’ in title and had nothing to show for raising the boys. He had nothing to show his pride. He had nothing to show the world that the boys were his.

(He had gotten them killed in the end. He didn’t deserve the beads even if they had been granted to him.)

“It was my pleasure.” Thorin ran his thumb along Kili’s birth bead, half hidden in her hair. “I’d do it all over again.”

…***...

“You get no pleasure from this.” Frodo declared, hands clenched together in an effort to keep him from flying towards the godking in a rage. “Your ‘duty’ is self imposed.”

“The separation was ordained!” Manwe cried out, jaw set in a stubborn matter. “I need not explain myself to a hobbit.”

“You do need to explain yourself to a hobbit.” Frodo spat, hands flying up into the air in exasperation. By the Green Lady, it was like talking to a Sandyman toddler, the whole clan was obstinate and unintentionally cruel. “Specifically you need to explain yourself to this hobbit.”

“Seperation ensured the lack of desecration to the Song.” Manwe proclaimed.

“It did not.” Ulmo cut in, almost lazily.

Frodo ignored the seagod. “We are going in circles. The Song was already changed by one of your own, whom you then exiled.”

“And look where that brought us.” Manwe spat. “A war that consumed your whole world. Greed and envy, blackhearted folk all throughout the races.”

Frodo threw his hands into the air again. “If we are all contaminated, then what is the harm in allowing the races to mingle? We already do so on Arda.”

“It is for your protection” Manwe snarled, his voice thundering and raw.

Frodo had not bowed to Sauron, he was not about to bow now. “We are either contaminated by greed and blackhearts, or we are pure. There is no inbetween!” He paused, eyes cutting over to Glory, who looked a bit like a mortal man when their hearts started to struggle. “Wait, is that why there is no gate around the elves? Because they’re ‘pure’. Because if that is the case, then I would like to note that a ‘corrupted hobbit’ had to take the ring, the singular corrupting influence, to be destroyed. And managed it, for the record.”

Frodo paused for a moment, his hand aching and his neck twinging. “With help.” He tacked on. “From the other corrupted races.”

“Argue what you wish, little mortal.” Manwe sighed, leaning back in his seat with an absent wave of a hand. As if the last conversation had not happened. As if Frodo could be dismissed. “No harm is caused by segregation.”

There was silence for a moment and then Frodo took one large and deliberate step back, startling Glory into following him. He knew that silence, he knew that silence well. His grandmother had been a hobbit who knew how to use that sort of silence like a knife.

Varda's eyes flashed a brilliant white, reminiscent of Gandalf's last title and just as blinding. “No harm?”

…***...

Down at the edge of the mountain, was a valley. Perhaps ‘valley’ was too strong a word for the place the little cottage was tucked away between the rock and the woods. In some ways, the structure reminded Thorin of Beorn’s, of the great house off the craig and far from any other type of civilization. In other ways, Thorin was reminded of the Shire and of the mountains. Houses that were built into nature, with woodwork and stone etchings carved lovingly into the very bones of the building. 

“We could ask for direction.” Dis murmured, their fingers still entangled. “Before we become far too lost to be of any help to your boy.”

Thorin barely heard her. 

Since his death, he had experienced a recurring dream. It wasn’t a nightmare, to call it such would have been a disservice. But what did you call a dream that was pleasant in experience, and melancholic in remembrance? Certainly, you couldn’t call the dream pleasant.

In the dream, there would be a home. Sometimes the rooms would be a strange amalgamation of his childhood quarters in the mountain and a hazy remembrance of the Crown Prince’s allotment. Other times the rooms were rustic, simplistic to his dwarrow trained eye, an odd mix of carved lumber and polished stone. A hobbity home mixed with the worn down halls of the Blue Mountains. (He found he preferred this setting to the others. He preferred this, something simple. Something safe.)

In his dream, there would be a home. Sometimes he would wander through the rooms, a familiar voice just out of reach. Other times, he would be working in the garden, tools spread around him as he fixed a gate. Behind him, Thorin would hear the soft turning of parchment, and smell the distinct scent of Shire pipeweed. In his dream, Thorin knew he was home, but he could never see the one who lived with him. There was another presence, just out of reach, but Thorin never had the voice to call out. He never had the breath to speak or the will to turn his head. Who was to know if he was the ghost? Who was to know if he was haunted?

Thorin had always carried his grief well. Too well. And staring down at that little cottage, that little plot of land that was somehow everything he had ever wanted and nothing he could have imagined, he knew. He knew who was sitting on that bench. He knew who had lit the fire that caused lazy smoke to rise from a chimney. He knew. He knew. He knew, and he could do nothing for it but turn to his sister and gently untangle their fingers.

Dis, for all her fierceness, for all her glory, for all her might, let him go.

And Thorin turned, his gaze not lingering, and he ran. He ran like a pebble, lightening fast and darting around his company as if they were overturned carts in the market. He ran, his bad leg not bothering him, his foot not screaming, his gaze not clouded. He ran, ducking around the flailing boys and jumping over his tussling cousins. He blew past Bifur and Bofur, heckling each other over his endless stein. He ran and he ran and he ran! Rocks and debris falling and tumbling beneath his boots as he left behind his company.

He ran!

And then he stopped, pulling in big heaving breaths, hands landing on the well loved gate. It stood open, as if whoever had last used it had left in some great hurry. But Thorin did not care. He did not care, but he pulled the gate shut behind him all the same. The cottages’ door was not green. There was no mark in the corner declaring the inhabitant a burglar for hire. There were no prize tomatoes in the garden, or a bench on the porch with a striker leaned against the side.

This was not Bagend. This was not the place his hobbit had whispered of during the dark and hungry nights on the road. This was not the place he had thunderously declared he missed when Thorin had made such cruel remarks before the Goblin Caves. This was not the place Thorin had thought of when he made his flower crown. But that did not matter.

The location did not matter, not when there was a hobbit with golden curls sitting on a too large bench, eyes closed and face tipped into the sun as he absently ran a finger along a crown of gold.

…***...

“No harm?” Varda repeated, the stars on her brow suddenly growing dark in her fury. 

For all that her husband had been intent on making himself a fool before her, Frodo had to admit the god knew when to draw back, if only due to the fierceness of his wife. 

“If you and I were not what we are,” she spat, her own throne skidding away from her as she lurched up to her feet and towered above the king, “then we would not be in the same haven!”

Glory hitched a breath and Frodo desperately wanted to slam his hands against the elf’s mouth. Immortal beings had never needed to learn the rules of prey and Frodo was suddenly aware of the fact he was standing before not only a king and queen, but gods. And one might not be able to die twice, but there were far worse things in the world, and Frodo had seen them himself. A rabbit did not wish to draw the gaze of a wolf. (Even rhosgobel rabbits did not deliberately draw the gaze of a warg, not without the might of a wizard behind them. Or so Bilbo had said.)

Manwe did not answer, and from the thunder in Varda’s eyes, she did not expect him to find the words at all. “You with your eagles, and me with my elves. We’d have never met.”

…***...

There was no bread to make. There was no wheat to grind, or flour to sift. There was nothing to do but sit. The Lady’s Husband had taken his crown of gold and left Bilbo behind at the cottage, sitting amongst the grass and the flowers, surrounded by greenery he could only have dreamed of seeing when he was alive.

But there was no bread to make.

And Bilbo did not know what to do.

There was a sudden noise outside of the fence and Bilbo closed his eyes. He did not wish to see the figure. There was no need. The interloper was Gandalf, or perhaps Radagast. Glory was also a possibility, if he had found himself bored enough. But in all likelihood the figure at the gate would be a wizard and Bilbo would be forced to go back. Back to the Garden, to the Pure lands. To anywhere and somewhere. 

Anywhere that wasn’t here.

(He did not want to go.)

Instead of looking up, Bilbo reached for his pipe and deftly went through the motions of preparing for a good long smoke. He had been doing so for a better part of his life and if he couldn't do this with his eyes closed, then he wasn't a Baggins of Bag End! He may have cheated a bit and squinted when he lit the strike, but that was fire and well, he knew better than most what fire could do to a person. To a community. To a mountain.

His feet swung freely and Bilbo leaned back on the bench. A crown of cut straw lay across his knees. Perhaps he ought to go find some thistle. It would certainly brighten up the crown, and would absolutely reflect his mood.

The gate creaked shut.

There was a nice breeze cutting through the Garden. It nipped at his nose and made the plants rustle. For a moment, Bilbo thought of calling out to Gandalf, mimicking the scene from that fateful day. He thought of calling out a ‘Good Morning’.

He thought of riddles and moments that were etched into time.

The crown really did need some thistle, or even some of the weeds that dotted around the cracks and dared to grow between the pathstones. There was more to life then gold, and Bilbo had found he did not like the colour. It was better to have browns and greens, the colour of life, of promises, of…

Footsteps echoed up the path.

“Good morning.” Bilbo called, taking a long drag from his pipe, his head tilted back. He had always been quite good at smoke rings. Perhaps here, in eternity, he could figure out the fancier shapes that had always eluded him. But he doubted it, he never had much patience.

There was a silence, as if Gandalf were simply staring at him for a good long while. And that was his right. Bilbo knew he had been frail and muddled in those last years, mind far away in the Mountains and wandering off with the pixies far afield. He hadn’t been himself, but of course that also begged the question of what ‘self’ was, and Bilbo found he did not want to dwell on such unpleasant things.

No, it was better to leave those to the scholars and the thinkers, of which he was only one tangentially through his poems and songs. Let others think of a world without end and time immortal. Bilbo was content with this sunbeam and pipe. He was content with this crown across his knees and this moment that stretched ever onward.

…***...

“Would you have kept us apart?” Varda asked, for all that she was looming over her husband, Frodo did not think she meant it as intimidation. Not anymore. No, she did it in the way his aunts did, half leaning against a doorframe and asking their husbands a question. They stood, because they did not care to sit. There were things to do and hours to go before bed. Rest came in quiet moments, and this was not quiet.

“I, with my elves of starlight and you with your eagles of the wind. We are husband and wife, yes, but by your own decree, we should not leave our children. We would be locked away in our havens, separated by not but a wall and a lock.”

“I would never leave you.” Manwe said, voice soft, and oh Frodo did not think he was supposed to be here for this. He was not meant to see a god grovel. He was not meant to see a god with that sort of look on his face, weathered and worn, old and tired. “Do not ask me to leave you.”

Varda stroked one hand tenderly along Manwe’s cheek. “Then why would you demand it of me?”

Manwe’s eyes closed, and he wept.

…***...

“Good morning, my burglar.”