Chapter Text
Bifur was the one the lad called Da. Of all the things that struck people about the little family, this was often considered the strangest. When it was mentioned, Bofur would laugh it off. He worked. Bombur worked. Someone had to tend the lad, and Bifur was less employable than his cousins.
He could have told them that Bifur had been a father once, before the raid. But that was no one's business. Especially not the drunks who questioned them. He trusted Bifur with the lad, through sickness and fire if it came down to it.
Not many mentioned the situation. The settlement in the north end of the Blue Mountains housed less than two hundred Dwarves at the best of times, and most of them were drifters. Some came to escape notice until word of their deeds died down and they were able to go home. They weren't usually ones for questions. Some had run away and were just waiting for word that they were wanted. They rarely asked questions either.
The ones who asked, as if they had a right, were the ones who were looking for work. They came and went, mostly. They would work for a season in the mine or try their hand at farming, and then they would leave with the money they had made. Some of them stayed, though. That was how Bofur's family came to live there not long after taking in the lad.
Bombur was in charge of the kitchen in the public house. Truth be told, he practically ran the place since Narvi spent all his time drinking. Bofur had risen to be a foreman in the mine. They mostly went after coal, but every now and then they would find something more worthwhile. Together, they made enough so that Bifur was able to stay home in their tiny cabin and be a father again.
Kíli was a good lad. They had found him, just days old, abandoned in a settlement to the south. And who would leave an infant alone? There were few enough children without letting one die for fear of the commitment. So they had taken him and moved north to find a home.
His hands flew with iglishmêk before he could speak, and to Bofur and Bombur's dismay his first words were broken Khuzdul. For a few months after that, Bombur brought the child to work with him. Khuzdul, after all, was a sacred language and not meant to suffer children's mangling.
But still, he was a good lad, their Kíli. High spirited and easily into mischief, but just as likely to be helping someone as he was to be swiping the pies from the public house kitchen. He had bright eyes, hair that they could never keep in any kind of order, and an irrepressible spirit that kept them busy of an evening chasing him down out of the rafters.
He loved music and stories from Bofur, and before he was ten he had his own little pipe. He loved the food Bombur made, and would dash about the kitchen or the settlement for him. And he worshipped Bifur, his Da who taught him how to make things.
He was the only child in the settlement, and Bofur sometimes worried that he was too old for his age because of it.
"Uncle," he whispered one night. Bifur had exhausted himself with a memory of the raid that had killed his wife and son, and Bombur had been in bed for days with the flu, so Bofur and Kíli were the only ones awake. The boy curled quietly in his lap, but Bofur could tell he wasn't really listening to the story being told.
Kíli looked up, eyes bright with tears. "Should we sell my clasp? Would we be able to get help for Da with that money?" He reached a small hand to the back of his head, ready to pull the silver clasp out immediately.
Bofur stopped him, taking the hands in his own. "That is the only thing you have to help you find your family and line when you grow up," he said. "We couldn't take it away from you, lad."
Kíli shook his head violently. "You're my family. You and Da and Uncle Bombur. I don't need any other. If it can help, we should sell it."
Bofur pulled the boy close. "Your Da will be better in the morning. He always is, laddie. And Bombur is on the mend. He'll be back in the kitchens before you know it. We'll rub along fine until then. Keep your shiny." He stroked the dark hair. "Did I ever tell you about the dancing plague of Rohan?" he asked, wanting to turn the boy's thoughts toward things a child should be rightly thinking of.
He was sure other ten year old Dwarf children didn't knock on doors to sell firewood or offer to shovel paths through winter. But the wide grin on the boy's face when he passed his pennies to Bifur made up for what Bofur couldn't remember having himself. And with no other children to play with, what else was he going to do?
In the years that followed, Kíli learned to use a bow and snares for hunting. As with his wood chopping, he first brought the meat home, then sold extra to the runaways and seasonal mine workers. And when Bifur started teaching him tanning, he took to it immediately.
He protested that the leather working tools that Bofur brought back from a trip south were too expensive, but Bofur just shrugged and played a merry jig while the lad worked with them. And he learned to use them. He learned anything he could, their lad.
Although at twenty five, he was hardly a lad. His hair was still wild, his skin was bronzed from the sun. He was strong from woodcutting, and he insisted on walking around barefoot half the year so he would make less noise when hunting. In worn homespun, the silver clasp in his hair drew comments that he easily turned aside with a joke. But he still wanted stories and songs, and he still went to sleep easiest when draped against his Da's side.
He worked hard at his leather and furs, trying his best to earn the tools Bofur had bought him. When he was forty, Bifur took a load of goods and drove south with them, coming home two weeks later with nothing left.
"The heir of Durin?" Bombur asked. "Was that wise?"
Bifur muttered an answer in Khuzdul and Kíli's eyes shone.
"He praised them, Da? The heir of Durin praised my furs?"
"And paid a fair price for them," Bofur pointed out. He watched Kíli eagerly question Bifur about the trip and shared a frown with Bombur. It was only a matter of time before he got it in his head to travel, and what would they do then?
Bofur and Bombur made the trips south for the next several years. Bifur's health took a bad turn, and Kíli would not leave his Da. He was the one who took care of the cabin in that time, his chance to hunt and cut wood drastically reduced by the need to tend the one who had raised him.
"It's silver," he pointed out, holding the hair clasp out to Bombur. "People pay a lot for well worked silver. If we sell it, we should have money for someone to come up here for Da."
It was hard to deny the plea in his eye, but Bombur folded the lad's hand over the clasp. "Your furs and the bone and antler beads you've been making bring in enough for that. Keep the bauble. You may be glad of it one day."
True to his word, Bombur brought an old healer back with him the next trip. Kíli saw his own beads in Óin's hair and knew how he'd been bought. The healer gave him one sharp look and turned to Bifur. By the time he left a week later, Bifur was up and about. Kíli pampered him for months until he was told to find something more constructive to do.
Knife throwing and fighting were not what Bifur had in mind, but that was what distracted Kíli enough to get him outside again.
It was very easy to tell that Nori was wanted somewhere. He didn't leave the empty cabin he was squatting in for several days. Whatever venture had him running north hadn't been a successful one, either, because when Kíli knocked on the door asking if he wanted firewood or venison he had no money to pay with. They easily made the deal - knife lessons in exchange for fuel and food.
"It seems I'm not the only thief hiding up here," Nori said casually.
"It's rightfully his!" Bofur answered angrily.
Nori's smirk made him pale. "No wonder you're hiding up here. You'd never be able to face up to real questioning."
"If you say anything to him," Bofur said, voice dark and hands tightening into fists.
Nori barked with laughter. "Nothing in it for me to say anything to anyone. You can't hide a thing, but secrets are my business."
All three of the older dwarves were happy when he was gone.
It was just past Kíli's seventy seventh birthday when the call came. It led to the biggest row the youth had ever had with the three who had raised him.
"I will go, Da," he insisted.
"Why?" Bombur asked insistently. "For gold and glory?" He spat, showing what he thought of those reasons.
"It's for the line of Durin to take care of," Bofur said soothingly, ignoring the sharp looks from his brother and cousin.
"I might be of Durin's line," Kíli pointed out. "We don't know. And I don't care about the gold." It was said nobly, but the skeptical looks he got from Bifur made him hang his head. "Not much. Enough gold so we wouldn't have to count pennies and starve for your healers, Da. And just think! A foundling on such a quest! It's practically a story on its own!"
In the end, Bofur rode south to make the offer. He was gone more than a week and looked older when he returned.
"Best we start packing."
"We?" Kíli asked.
"You think we'd let you run off on your own?" Bombur demanded while Bifur roughly petted the youth's dark hair.
Kíli's exultant grin was enough to make them regret less what was sure to come.