Chapter Text
Red.
Not blood, but a ruched scarlet red that makes her lips look dark and her eyes darker. Billa cannot understand it. So, she decides to ask.
“Why this colour?” she enquires, and Bessr’s light green eyes meet hers. The girls’ hair is also red, but a lighter shade tinged with gold and hints of strawberry, like her fathers in its richer shades.
“I don’t rightly know, Lady Billa.” Bombur’s eldest daughter says, tugging at the threads that will tie up the tunic, pulling them down the length of Billa’s back in short, frustrated motions. “It won’t go.”
“Try upwards, and you needn’t call me lady.” Billa says, gripping the bedpost, one hand over the other. This tunic is made for a dwarrowdam, that is the problem, for Billa is rather fuller in the chest than the ladies who lived in Erebor of old.
“Ooh, that is better.” Bessr gives a quick smile as she changes the direction of her tugging and the tunic forms itself at last to Billa’s shape. Bessr fetches a girt of silvery metal and fastens it under Billa’s chest, looking dubiously at the hobbitess’ front as she does so.
Unused to being waited on so, Billa is nonetheless obedient. The process frustrates her beyond endurance, it is true, but after two days of keeping to the chamber Kili relinquished for her, she has been called to court, to stand before the King with her fellow hobbits, and so she must look the part.
“If you don’t mind me asking, milady…I mean mistress Billa…what’s the reason for…for them?” Bessr nods at Billa’s protruding bosom, flushing and ducking her face as she does so.
Billa steps down from the stool and considers. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“I only…I meant no offence, but is the little one still at the teat? Is that why they’re so…”
“No.” Billa laughs at Bessr’s candid shyness, suddenly grateful that she expected the girl’s offer of help. She may be less than sixty, a young age for a dwarrowdam, but she is deft and kind, and Freya likes her. Billa glances over to where her daughter is absorbed in playing with Fili’s carved lion, and counts the slow ticks of relief and shame in her heart. “No, she is not.”
“So they are just…shaped like that?” Bessr’s asks, eyes round. “ All the time? How odd.” She glances down at her own smoother front. Tact, Billa reflects, is not something dwarrows know a lot of.
However, she is used to it by now- one has to be, sharing a corridor with Fili and Kili.
Them and their uncle.
But she has not seen Thorin since he moved Freya’s cot to her chambers, knocked his forehead gently against their daughter’s and left to placate the Ironfist lords, who are apparently calling for Billa’s blood to be spilt on Mahal’s altar in order to attest to her true nature. They are a suspicious clan, coming from so far north and keeping very much to their own, so she hears. But their leader, she thinks his name is Migan, does not seem to take as much offense to her as his underlings do- or at least he keeps it better hidden.
For that at least she can count her blessings- and that he has kept Thorin distracted, however inadvertently. Truly she does not know what to say to him- or what she would if he would even look at her a minute. It is rather inconsiderate of him to circumvent her plans for a talking to by completely disappearing, even from his own rooms.
Disconcerting further is the fact that Freya asks for him. Last night she had to get up and fetch her daughter only to find her tugging at Thorin’s locked door and whimpering. He was not within, Billa knew that, for her King does not sleep heavily and he would have heard their daughter.
Their daughter. It is dangerous, how quickly she has slipped into thinking that- but then again everyone in Erebor calls Freya such, even Bofur who is wholly and firmly on Billa’s side.
Billa does not like that there are sides. Goddess help her, she does not like that any of this has happened, and she is more than partially to blame. She knows that, better than they think.
But Thorin is too, they both are, and if he thinks to pass judgement upon her from atop his metal-mithril-marble whatever it is throne that they had to steal back in the first place, well then. He has yet another think coming. He may be a dwarf and immovable as his (quite lovely, Billa has to admit, the restorers have done a wonderful job) mountain, but her roots go deep as his, even if they are planted further west.
She is a Baggins of Bag-end. Her father’s mother was a Grubb and her mother was a Boffin and Billa’s mother a Took, and Billa has enough Harfoot and Fallohide and just a drop of Stoor in her to make her a stubborn kind of hobbit indeed.
More than a match, she thinks as Bessr presses some of Billa’s own tatty brass hairpins into the hobbit’s loose braids, for Thorin Oakenshield. She is a hobbit of the Shire who reclaimed a mountain. She has cut webs and rode barrels and stolen rings and jewels and a King’s heart for her very own, and given it back again. Or so she chooses to believe.
She is Billa Baggins. And she can and will be brave.
*
“That went well, I think.” Paladin gives a grim sort of smile as they are ushered out of throne room and along a stone passage.
Billa presses her hand to her forehead and thanks whichever Valar is paying attention at the moment that she had the foresight to leave Freya happily playing with Bessr and Kili, both of whom had enthusiastic enough about remaining behind- why, Kili had practically chased her out of the door and down the corridor.
“Well?” Hamfast scoffs, fingers hooked through his borrowed suspenders (Ori’s) in an authoritative manner. “If that was well, please let’s stay far away from whatever not well is.”
“Oh boys.” Billa sighs. They do not know Thorin as she does, and the fact that he sat through her audience with his eyes fixed on the pins in her hair is the least surprising fact. Nothing much had happened- Paladin had read out the declaration the mayor had signed, Balin had made some diplomatic noises, and Lord Dain (who Billa cannot help but like) had suggested they continue negotiations in private.
The squirming in Billa’s stomach as she sits down to wait for her…for Thorin. The document Paladin carries is going to cause more than a few hiccups in whatever is happening- which, truthfully, Billa hardly knows. She feels odd in this dwarvish rainment, which clings almost too naturally to her skin.
To be so at ease in Erebor- it cannot be. Yet neither can she shake it off entirely. She has never been able to, since she first entered these halls years ago and Thorin started draping her in far too many jewels.
He has not done so this time, thank goodness. Not that she was not grateful, but it had been more a symptom of his slow-growing madness than anything and she never wishes to see that again.
Billa is prepared for Thorin to be angry, to shout and rage and be his stubborn arrogant prideful self that she loves better than anything save Freya, but if she catches even a whisper of that gold lust in his eyes, well- she has an emergency bag packed and Bofur has promised to show her, Freya and her fellows a secret way out through the mines.
She will not risk her child in the face of Durin’s curse. But she is sure it will not come to that. Thorin does not even wear gold now, and perhaps he too knows the dangers.
His eyes though when he enters the chamber and storms over to her are full of a much fiercer wrath. Gold-lust is sickness of the mind, it slows and fattens and twines itself round the soul. This is not gold madness, it is all Thorin and fire and kingsblood, but he is angry nonetheless.
Balin manages to extract the papers from Paladin only to have them swiped with minimal care from by the King Under the Mountain, who moves raging blue eyes over the parchment before bringing them at last to rest on Billa.
“What exactly is a wergild?” Thorin asks, and Billa starts. She looks at Paladin, who avoids her gaze, and at the paper Thorin has shoved under her nose. Trying not to be distracted by his sudden closeness, she reads for the first time the demands of her relations.
Oh dear. What a fool she has been. And of course it would come to money.
“That.” she says waspishly, tapping a finger against the impetuos demand for compensation for her non-existent honour and virtue- “That is Odo Proudfoot’s doing, and you can feel free to cross it out.” The nerve of her cousin, to demand financial compensation on her behalf (with a cut for his own kin of course)- as if she ever even gave the slightest inclination!
Then again, she should have expected this. Not all her kin support her current life decisions, the Proudfeet least of all, so it is not wholly surprising they would try and regain at least some respectability, even through this most ridiculous of customs.
“Balin.” Thorin says, handing the paper over to his chief advisor, who fetches quill and ink and does as he is told, despite Paladin’s indignant huffing. Thorin shows minimal interest, instead training light blue eyes on Billa. “War?” he asks.
“Not my doing.” she answers, wishing she was back in her chambers with Freya and her boys. But Fili has been pressed into entertaining some of the Ironfists and Kili…she has asked enough of him, of both of them.
She has been selfish. She has had to be, but now she has Freya back (she does, no matter what anyone says, and woe betide any dwarf who lays a finger on Billa’s child without permission), she must not be. But it is hard, oh it is damnably hard with Thorin standing in her space and his eyes on her, shifting and sending pulses through her skin.
“Oh, was it not? And might I ask how your Shire intends to fight us, Billa mine?” His fingers reach up briefly, card through loose strands of her hair so quick and light she can hardly remember to pull back before he does so himself.
“Don’t.” She breaks out, pushing back her chair and drawing herself to her full height. “Stop. I came here to get my daughter back, not to have any more to do with you, oh King under the Mountain. Our affairs are quite over. I wish you joy of your throne.” She instantly regrets that particular barb, but words once released cannot be drawn back, so she holds her ground.
“Quite done you say?” Thorin replies, and the room seems to narrow, filtering out Balin and Paladin and Hamfast and the guardsman looking exceedingly uncomfortable by the door. “Quite done. We have a child and you say quite done?”
“Yes.” Billa replies, and there it is- her long misplaced fury. She cannot say she is glad of its return, but it helps. Serves its purpose. Righteous rage is not the sole command of kings, and there is a whirlwind in her that he had better not test. “You turned us away. You left us- I may have walked away but you left me- I would never have gone, and you are a fool if you think so.”
“I do not.” Thorin says roughly. “But you cannot deny me my child. No longer will I endure to be parted from the two of you.”
Paladin squawks indignantly, but all Billa feels is the blood roaring in her own ears at Thorin’s claims. “Your child! You have had her what, a week? How dare you…after everything you’ve done you have no right, no right at all.” She knows the folly of her words in some far off distant part of herself, but forces them out anyhow.
Thorin’s eyes grow dark as he looks at her. “She is mine- no, ours, she is ours just as much as she is yours. I am her father.”
With a scoff of pure outrage, Billa pushes past this king who seeks to take her child from her and she whirls on him with fire in her grey-brown eyes. “And I am her mother- I birthed her and I raised her, alone and I will not allow you to take her.”
“I seek to do no such thing!” Thorin replies, and if they had swords they would be locked at the hilt.
“Thorin, enough.” Balin shakes his white bearded head in what seems like sorrow, but the king and the hobbit are beyond reaching.
“Billa.” Thorin says, daring to sound reasonable after all he has done. “I love her just as you do.”
“Your men took her from me, they took her and they hurt her, brought her here against her will and mine and you stand there and claim to love her, to keep her as yours after a week?” Billa snarls. She knows she is behaving in a way that would make her own mother look at her aghast, but she cannot bear this- cannot bear the guilt, the shame he is making her feel, and how all it does is fuel her wrath.
“Aye.” Thorin replies, proud and strong as a king of old, utterly sure under his bloody bloody mountain. “If I could take back what they did, I would, a thousand times, and my own deeds as well. But before you speak to me of weeks, Billa, answer me this. Could you have relinquished her, after a week of having her in your arms? After a day, or an hour, or a minute? Could you?”
Billa’s skin goes cold- the air beneath the rock rushing in to choke her, pipe and gullet clamming up and over. She looks at the king and does not breathe.
“I thought as much.” Thorin says. “Yet you ask it of me as though it were nothing.”
And the worst of it is, there is no victory in his tone. No recrimination when he has every right to chastise her, for using her love for Freya as a weapon against him. For that is what she had done, even as she spoke, without realising it almost. “I…I am…Thorin, for heaven’s sake you banished me. I impugn your sacred laws by even standing here.”
“Then I rescind it.” He says, as if this is simple, or easy. Billa cannot breathe. “I name you traitor no longer, Billa Baggins. You might...” He sounds so sure, in spite of his hesitation, and it is that which truly breaks her.
“What? What would you have me do, my king?” She says, wooden as a tree in Eastfarthing forest.
“Stay.” Thorin answers simply. “Leave this talk of war and contracts. Let me…our daughter needs you. Stay.” He is not asking, but it is as close as a king of any mountain will ever come. Billa blinks twice, aware of her gathering tears and hating them.
Everything she had sworn to avoid, all her sensible plans are in tatters, and once again Thorin Oakenshield stands in the middle of it with squared shoulders and armour intact. Do not leave me. Not now, not this time. He says to her without words, as he always has, always could. This time, though, Billa realises, the blame sits squarely on both their shoulders.
So neither of them will give an inch.
Not seeing any way back from the unbearable, unalterable truth of their situation, she does the only thing she can do. She looks around her, shakes her head in a minute gesture of helplessness, and makes for the door.
She never left. He had left her, left her on the ground and retreated from her, and kept a small, torn part of her soul for his comfort. And now he would have the rest.
And that, Billa knows as she breaks into a run, is the one longing she cannot give into, as well as the truth she cannot avoid.