Chapter Text
Bilbo was content with his life.
Certainly, absolutely, undoubtedly content.
He had eaten good food and made wonderful friends and awful enemies in the Shire, then unexpectedly been dragged on an adventure of proportions previously beyond his imagination. He had encountered a dragon, witnessed an unbelievable battle, and spent enough time on the road to truly treasure his little hobbit hole when he returned to it. He had helped a stoic but evidently incredibly resilient dwarf retake his family’s land and earned his trust—even perhaps his respect—and watched him become King under the mountain.
Well, mostly.
He had, at one point, had Thorin’s trust and perhaps his respect. By the time he packed up and slipped away in the dead of night, he was pretty sure Thorin didn’t maintain such an opinion of him, even if he was kind enough to clear the air between them before he passed out, bloodstained and peaceful. He had seen Thorin take the land and fight for it, and become king, though it didn’t last long and it seemed rather haphazard. There hadn’t exactly been time for too much custom, whatever dwarf custom was supposed to be.
But regardless, he’d gotten his fill of adventures and dwarves and dragons, and he was now ready and willing to nurse those stories for the rest of his life, puttering about in his garden, grateful to not to be worried that he might be dead by the next morning.
He got up and made food and cheerfully watered and weeded his garden every day. He began to make social calls to those who may have missed him, to hear the news about who had spotted who holding hands in the fields and whose carrots were missing from their plots and which hobbit had blacked out drunk and been found groggily snacking in a barrel of apples three weeks go. Thrilling stuff, really.
He began to get a bit of a reputation around the Shire for his tales of willowy elves and glowering dwarves and giant dragons standing in mountains of gold, most of which people did not believe. The more people asked him what the dragon had been “made out of” and where he had gone on “holiday” and asked him again and again why they didn’t have second breakfast when he was out having “his fun” the more distant those days seemed. More and more, it seemed like the Shire had always been Bilbo’s life, and his wonderful, terrifying, baffling journey with the dwarves had been some odd episode of his, some unexplainable whim.
He began to believe it when he told himself that he was glad it was all in the past, and he would likely never see or hear from anyone he had gotten to know, perhaps better than he had ever really known anyone else.
He was sanding down the wooden fence around his garden to prep it for painting, content to watch the faded wood gain that smooth, yet somehow gritty look, when the crow landed right on top of the picket he had just finished sanding.
“Excuse me!” he burst out, already out of sorts from the wood particles hanging in the air and cursing the half-drunk shopkeeper who’d sold the paint to him—who insisted on prepping for painting anyway? It all seemd a bit much—flapping his hands to shoo the crow away.
The crow looked right at him with its shiny black eye and lifted lazily in the air to avoid Bilbo’s waving, but didn’t go any further. The dusty wood bits swirled in the air around them both, setting off a sneeze in Bilbo, and the crow seemed to be reproaching Bilbo for it, as if it was Bilbo’s fault it had chosen to interrupt Bilbo’s latest home improvement project.
Tied to its thin black leg was a carefully rolled up letter.
To: Master Bilbo Baggins of The Shire
From: King Thorin Oakenshield of Erebor
Dear Master Baggins,
By the grace of my gifted healers and Elvish medicines, I have regained consciousness and my ability to write, albeit slowly and without as much dexterity as I would like. I apologize for any confusion over my handwriting.
The company we traveled with, my kin, have informed me that you made the long journey back to your land, The Shire. I wish only to confirm that you have indeed reached home safely, and no harm has befallen you.
If you would do me the kindness of such reassurances, I would be grateful, but I do not wish to disturb you and I do not presume that my title obligates you to respond swiftly, or at all. If you feed this bird out of your own palm, it will fly back to me. If you wish to respond, do not feed it out of your palm until you have attached your response.
May your forge remain bright,
Thorin Oakenshield of Erebor
Bilbo sat down at his table, staring at the letter in his hands. After so long trying not to think anything about Thorin, he wasn’t sure what to think. He had smudged the letter, he realized, and the ribbon that tied it up, with dirt from the yard.
He thought first how inconvenient it was that Thorin had written him when he was busy, quite busy, painting his fence and living his very fulfilling life.
He thought second how idiotic it was for Thorin’s letter to be so short. If Thorin was to fly something to him all the way from Erebor—that long, winding journey—he may as well make the most of it, but instead there were several inches of the rolled parchment left blank above and below Thorin’s message, as if the words were luxurating loudly in their loneliness. What was the point of all that? Couldn’t Thorin have written him more? Couldn’t he have said, for example, whether he was set to make a full recovery? Or how it felt to become king and whether the transition was going well? Could he have mentioned whether the company was doing well? Or did Thorin simply think that Bilbo was living a different life now, in a different world, and details like that didn’t pertain to him any longer?
Well, if Thorin did indeed think so, Bilbo reminded himself, he would be right. It was good to know Thorin had not, in fact, died slowly in some stony medical room in Erebor, and that was all Bilbo needed to know, really. Just the amount of closure he needed to move on with his life.
He could see now, of course, that he had been lying to himself all this time about really being separate from that whole episode of his, and that he had really been yearning for more, for something that would tell him definitively that it was over—and now he had received it! Not knowing Thorin was alive—of course that had gotten in his way. Who in their right mind would be able to carry on with a question like that living in the back of their head?
But of course now, with all the things he needed to do here in Bag End, like watering the plants and weeding, cooking and visiting his acquaintances and… surely other things as well, it would be quite easy to forget all about Thorin, Bilbo was quite sure.
The crow, perched curiously on Bilbo’s windowsill, watched peaceably as Bilbo penned his reply. If Thorin insisted on such a—a—rudely, infuriatingly short and undetailed message, Bilbo would do the same.
To: Thorin Oakenshield
From: Bilbo Baggins
Dear Thorin,
How kind of you to inquire. I made it safely home to my Hobbit hole, thank you.
For a moment, Bilbo sat there, wondering desperately if there was anything else he could get away with saying without breaking his commitment to be just as clear, concise, and impersonal as Thorin’s letter had been. Not that he was looking for conversation. He was simply looking to say a little more without appearing to invite more conversation.
Coming up blank, he simply signed it Best from Bag End, Bilbo, and rolled up the paper. He, too, was leaving plenty of empty space above and below the message. Why the brevity of Thorin’s letter irked him so much, he couldn’t quite say, but he was determined to give Thorin the same feeling.
“Hello there,” Bilbo said, clicking his tongue at the crow and moving slowly towards it. To his surprise, the bird seemed to show no fear, eagerly hopping up onto his arm. “I see Thorin has taught you to be friendly.” Carefully, Bilbo pulled the ribbon Thorin had used and tied his message to the crow’s leg. The crow cocked its sleek black head but otherwise held perfectly still, its demeanor unmistakably patient. “You’re friendlier than Thorin,” Bilbo muttered. Determined to outdo Thorin, he tied it with a neat bow, ripped the corner off a nice, thick-crusted slice of bread, and held it out to the crow in his cupped palm.
Seeming pleased, the crow bent down and picked at it, surprisingly gentle. Its beak looked quite sharp, but it never even came into contact with Bilbo’s palm. Then, with a bob of his head and a hop to the window, it took off into the sky.
Bilbo watched it, this little black spot, and then caught himself. What was he doing? It was all done. He had learned Thorin was alright, he had reassured Thorin of the same, he had closed that matter, and he was not lingering. He deliberately pulled his eyes away from the crow and returned outside with his square of sandpaper.
A day later, just as Bilbo was finishing the first coat of paint—thin, watery paint that demanded three coats, and then a clean “covering coat,” whatever that was supposed to mean—Frodo burst right through it.
“Bilbo, Bilbo!” he was calling as he ran up, but it swiftly became, “Oh, yuck. What is this?”
Bilbo stared down at Frodo, sighing. There was a Frodo-shaped imprint on the fence and Frodo’s front was wet and stinking of the pale brown concoction, staining his baggy shirt and dripping onto his bare feet.
“I was painting the fence,” Bilbo said pointedly, wiping the brush mindlessly on the nearest post. “What were you doing?”
Frodo peered down at himself. “Brown?”
“Well, yes.”
Frodo’s blue eyes peered up at him through that fringe of dark hair. He looked sort of like Thorin, Bilbo thought. It wasn’t the first time he thought it, but he told himself—as he always told himself—that it might be the last. “It’s already brown; it’s wood,” Frodo said mildly, as if Bilbo might have forgotten.
“Quite,” Bilbo said, curling an arm carefully around Frodo’s back so as not to get any of the paint on himself. “Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?”
Frodo carefully rolled up the hems of his pants so that they would cease dripping and obediently made his way inside, telling Bilbo about how Merry and Pippin were saying Bilbo’s stories were all made up.
“They said they’re all exaggerated,” Frodo said, shucking off his overalls. “That you never even saw an elf.”
“I wouldn’t lie about that,” Bilbo argued, handing Frodo a wet cloth. “Why would I have been nearly killed by the dwarf king if I hadn’t traded away the Arkenstone to the elves?”
Frodo swiped the wet cloth over the streaks of brown paint on his skin, smearing it around, but eventually washing it off. “They’ve been saying the part about the Dwarven king is probably made up too.”
Bilbo gaped. “Made up?” He handed over a clean set of clothes. They were slightly too big for Frodo, the pants reaching Frodo’s ankles instead of the mid-calf the way they were intended, and the smart white button down billowing out around Frodo’s wrists, but at least they were nice and clean.
Frodo scrubbed at the splotch of drying paint on his cheek and patted his hair down neatly. “Well you know how you are. You don’t always tell exactly the truth. You like to tell tales.”
“I like to tell tales!” Bilbo huffed. “The dwarven king was quite real, I’ll have you know. You’ve missed a bit, just here. Don’t talk.”
Frodo lifted his chin up for Bilbo to scrub underneath, seemingly content to stay quiet. He’d always been a quiet one, Frodo, always preferring long days tucked among the trees with a notebook and carefully wrapped lunches.
“He’s taller than most Hobbits,” Bilbo said, abandoning the wet cloth in favor of a bar of soap. The wet paint had begun to dry, clinging to Frodo’s skin.
“Who?” Frodo asked while he had the opportunity.
“The king. Thorin. Keep up.” Bilbo ran the cloth over the bar of soap and got back to work. “He’s got hair like yours—very dark and curly, but its very long, and he’s quiet, like you, but when he speaks he can be—well, he can be a bit scary. He didn’t think much of me.”
Frodo was quiet.
“Not that it matters much, anymore,” Bilbo continued. “You’re all done. And that’s all—”
“Behind you. Yes, Uncle, I know,” Frodo finished for Bilbo. “That’s what I mean. You don’t always tell the truth.”
Bilbo made a sort of grunt. “Well, I don’t—I really don’t think—”
“Can I have a snack?” Frodo interrupted, with the air of someone quite put upon.
Bilbo fetched him a snack.
Bilbo found himself having a bit of a smoke and a chat with Merry and Pippin. Or, more specifically, Bilbo was having the smoke and the chat, and Merry and Pippin were satisfied with a basket of bread and cheese Bilbo had scrounged from his storeroom. This was the last cheese, given that the dwarves and cleaned him out pretty completely when they came so long ago. He had written himself a little note on a scrap of paper to refill his cheeses and cured meats and left it on his desk before he set out for Merry and Pippin, and now they were listening raptly to Bilbo tell them about one of his encounters with the orcs.
“It was so strange—the night air was so cold, but the trees were all burning and everything was hot, hot, hot! And then, there we were, stuck in that tree, and the tree had fallen, so it was hanging over the edge of the cliff, like this.” Bilbo demonstrated with a stick and the edge of the bench he was sitting in on the Took’s porch. Merry and Pippin made appreciative sounds, properly impressed. “And the orc, the big one, had a huge thing, with a big knob at the end, like a spoon—”
“A spoon?” Merry repeated, sounding unimpressed.
“A big, big spoon, but if it was a ball at the end, instead of a spoon.” Bilbo thought back. “But the ball wasn’t solid—it had hard metal edges sticking out—”
“A big spoon but a ball? But it wasn’t a ball?” Pippin confusedly tried to create some sort of monstrous shape with his hands.
“Yes, exactly,” Bilbo agreed, although Pippin wasn’t close by any stretch of the imagination. “But then Thorin—”
“The King!” Merry interjected.
“Yes, the King. Thorin, he stood up on the tree, and it was quite impressive, really—”
“Only he wasn’t King yet,” Pippin added wisely.
“Yes, that’s right. It was quite brave, I should say, the way he walked straight towards the biggest orc, with nothing but a blade and a log, see—”
“A log?”
“Well, I suppose it was more like a piece of a large branch.”
“A log is really big.”
“It wasn’t quite a log, but he had very little time to react to this huge orc swinging his big weapon—but he didn’t cower. I could just see him, the strong dwarf against desperate odds, surrounded by the flames—”
“You should make him do a sneak attack,” Pippin advised unhelpfully. “If he’s the weaker one, it’s probably not good to fight him head on like that.”
“I can’t, because I’m not making it up,” Bilbo said patiently. “I’m telling you what really happened.”
“Right,” Merry said.
“Of course,” Pippin added. “Where’d you get this cheese?”
Bilbo sighed and told them about the cheese.
To: Master Bilbo Baggins of The Shire
From: King Thorin Oakenshield of Erebor
Dear Master Baggins,
Thank you for your response. It has eased my worry for you and I am grateful. However, I find that it is not entirely gone. Please excuse me if this is a disturbance, but I find myself wondering whether your home was in tact when you returned and your beloved garden managed to survive while you were away. I do not wish to pry into your life, but I would take responsibility for any harm that has come to your home while you were occupied helping me take back mine.
May your forge remain bright,
Thorin Oakensheild of Erebor
Bilbo was quite impressed. It had taken hardly a week for the crow to deliver his message and return with Thorin’s reply—a reply he had not even expected. This letter was shorter than the last, much to his chagrin, but he was gratified to find within it an excuse to reply.
Just so he could have the last word, of course.
He did not miss Thorin, who surely was busy with no time for Bilbo and no real care for him either. Bilbo could only imagine that Thorin had let go of his anger with Bilbo in the face of death, but upon waking, once again picked up his grudge. Everybody tried to settle their arguments before they died. Bilbo wasn’t about to hold him to it.
“What’s that?” Frodo peered over Bilbo’s shoulder, clutching a piece of toasted bread with a fried egg on top.
Bilbo startled. “What did we say about food in my study?” he asked, shooing Frodo away.
Frodo sighed. “Nothing drippy,” he recited mournfully, “and clean up your crumbs.”
“I’d call this drippy, wouldn’t you?” Bilbo pointed to the soft yolk of the egg. “Now why aren’t you out playing? Did you need something?”
“It’s hot outside.” Frodo eyed him and then looked back at his desk, where there were piles of loose papers, stacks of books, quills lying flat at the edge. “What’s this? I thought we had tea time soon.”
Bilbo had forgotten to prepare for tea time. How long had he spent rereading this letter…. Well, it didn’t do to dwell.
“Of course,” he said quickly, scooping up the letter, a blank sheaf of paper, and a quill to take with him to the dining table. “I’ve got a lovely fruit and nut loaf. Would you be so good as to get a few berries from the garden?”
Frodo skipped off as Bilbo sliced the loaf and boiled a pot of water for tea.
The garden was just fine, he would tell Thorin, and unfortunately people had assumed he was dead, so they’d tried to auction off his things. He wondered what Thorin meant by “I would take responsibility.” Perhaps the adventure itself had been his—but not his fault. And besides, Bilbo should’ve written up a proper will before setting out, only he’d made a rather split second decision and there was no time for things like wills.
He set the table with Frodo, served them both a cup of tea and their bread and berries, and pushed the plates and cups and the teapot aside to make room for his blank letter.
To: Thorin Oakenshield
From: Bilbo Baggins
Dear Thorin,
My garden is doing wonderfully. Some of my good acquaintances took care of it a bit, and nature did the rest of the work. I had quite a bit of weeding to do when I got back, I must admit, but I’ve got it all fixed up now. As for my home, it seems everyone was convinced I was dead and they were auctioning off my possessions when I got back. A warm welcome indeed. My house looked a bit like when you and your dwarves arrived—
“Uncle Bilbo,” Frodo interrupted, tapping Bilbo’s paper to get his attention. “You didn’t put the tea in.”
“Hmm?” Bilbo looked up. Frodo was peering into his tea cup, sniffing it. “Don’t be silly, you’re holding it.”
“It’s just water,” Frodo told him patiently.
Bilbo blinked. “I must’ve gotten distracted. I’ll put the tea right in.”
With a sigh, he pushed himself back from the table and went into the kitchen, poking around for his box of tea.
“What are you working on?” Bilbo could hear Frodo’s flat little feet pattering around the table. He read aloud very slowly, as he was still learning. “Dear…. Th—Thorn.”
“Thorin,” Bilbo corrected, fishing the tea of of his tea box. He cut a bit of the fruit and nut bread off of the edge of the loaf and tossed it out the window, where he knew the crow was waiting, careful not to feed out of his palm. The crow rose into the air almost immediately, the slice hanging from his beak, and settled on a nearby branch with a bow of its head.
“Oh, wow,” Frodo murmured. “You’re writing him a letter?”
Bilbo returned. “Yes, now shoo.”
He added the tea to the pot and continued to write.
…and cleaned my pantry right out. I got most of my things back, but of course some of my nemeses have refused to return things because “they have already paid for them.” I’ve offered to buy it off them, but hobbits like these can’t be reasoned with.
Best from Bag End,
Bilbo
Frodo plucked at Bilbo’s sleeve. “Will you read it to me?”
Bilbo often read to Frodo, tracing the words with his fingers so that Frodo could follow along. Frodo, angelically patient for a hobbit so young, would sit rapt in his lap as he told stories—sometimes ones he’d written himself—before bed, or read him. It was one of the things he thought he truly excelled at in raising Frodo.
“Well,” he said, ready to begin, but just then there was a tapping on the window. The crow was at the window, peering in at their table full of food and hovering with big flaps of its wings in a way that seemed to be accusing Bilbo of inconsiderateness. “Another time, maybe,” Bilbo told Frodo. “My messenger seems eager to go.”
Bilbo scooped up some of the berries, which he hadn’t touched, and swung open the window, securing the message and feeding the bird.
Again the crow bowed its head and was gone.