Chapter Text
The stone halls of Erebor echoed with the silence of mourning. Years had passed since the Battle of the Five Armies, but the mountain still felt heavy with grief. Some wounds never healed. Some never tried.
Dis stood at the foot of her brother’s tomb. Her fingers, weathered by time and sorrow, brushed the runes carved into the stone.
Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain.
She had never wept. Not for Thorin. Not for her boys.
Not even when she buried all three beneath stone and silence.
She had not cried because someone had to remain whole. Someone had to live. And she had lived—without warmth, without song, without her sons. She had lived in the cold echo of all they’d lost.
Footsteps behind her drew her attention, but she didn’t turn. She knew the tread: soft, uncertain, no longer belonging to the mountain.
Bilbo Baggins.
He came once a year, just after winter. Quietly. Always alone. He never brought flowers. Only silence. It was more fitting.
Bilbo stood beside her, eyes red-rimmed but dry. He hadn’t cried yet. Not this year. He always waited until she left.
Today, Dis did not move to go.
Instead, she said, softly, “You loved him.”
Bilbo’s shoulders tensed. “Yes,” he whispered, as if admitting it out loud would bring the mountain down again.
Dis looked at the stone. “So did I. He was my brother. He was stubborn, proud… but he was mine.”
Bilbo swallowed hard. “I tried to bring him home. I tried.”
“I know.” Her voice was still. “He didn’t come back to us either.”
Silence stretched between them like a grave.
Finally, Bilbo stepped closer, placing his hand on the cold stone. “I see him still, you know. In dreams. Sometimes, he’s angry. Sometimes… he’s smiling. That rare smile. The real one.”
Dis turned, finally, and for the first time, Bilbo saw it—her grief, raw and waiting. Not in tears. But in the lines of her face. In the way her mouth trembled and then tightened.
“I have not cried,” she said. “Not when I buried Kíli. Not when I placed Fíli’s sword beside him. Not when I sealed Thorin in this tomb.” Her voice cracked, and she did not stop it.
“He asked me to let go,” Bilbo whispered. “He said to go home.”
“And did you?”
“No. I left, but I never went home.”
Dis looked at him, really looked. “Then stay.”
Bilbo blinked. “What?”
Her voice was soft, but sure. “Stay. You’re not just a hobbit who wandered too far. You are part of this mountain’s story. Of his story.”
“I—” Bilbo’s voice caught. “I have no place here.”
“You were his heart. You gave him peace before the end. That makes you kin.”
The word hit harder than any blade.
Kin.
He reached out again, his fingers brushing the carved runes. He bowed his head. And then, finally, after all these years, Bilbo Baggins wept.
Dis did not stop him.
She stood beside him, still and silent, as one tear finally slipped down her cheek.
Only one.
It was enough.