Chapter Text
Their first meeting in her dismal rabbit warren of a hole fixed Thorin’s default reaction to Bilbo; adventures and battles and deathbed confessions have changed how he feels, but whenever his best beloved gets a certain lift to her chin part of Thorin always heaves an enormous, growling sigh.
“You what,” he says, too exhausted to raise the pitch at the end of the sentence and turn it into a question. He’s spent the entirety of the day being called from his very important job of glowering at Bard while Balin wrangled compromises out of the Esgaroth trade delegation in order to check on repairs to the diamond mine (which has finally been uncovered, long blocked by a truly staggering amount of fossilized dragon shit) and approve various other repairs that Bilbo usually oversees.
She, as far as he can tell, has spent the day fiddling around with yarn and knitting needles while Ori wore out his voice saying, “No — not like that.” When dwarves are with child, they usually work right up until the delivery, and it is not uncommon for a baby to be born halfway down a mine shaft and get swaddled into some spare rags until such time as the day’s work is done. Hobbits, apparently, are more fragile creatures.
His great treasure — “I wonder if you keep calling me all those endearments to remind yourself you can’t throw me off the wall when I annoy you anymore,” Bilbo mused on their wedding night, and Thorin stopped her from pursuing that line of thought as best he was able — props her chin on his chest, the rest of her warm and comfortable against his side. “I need to go home,” she repeats. “Back to the Shire.”
“If there were a scribe nearby, I’d ask him to remind you that this conversation is how you wound up pregnant and I was forced to marry you in a great rush several months ago,” Thorin says, because snatching her up in his arms and refusing to let her go is, he’s been told, undignified.
“Yes, well, that ended very nicely for all concerned, you included,” she wrinkles her nose at him, brushing some strands of hair out of her face. It is loose and unbraided, the beads that Thorin no longer allows anyone but himself to work into her hair each morning now carefully put away for the night in her jewel-box on the shelf. “And do stop pouting, you look exactly like Kíli when you do that and it makes me feel like I’m molesting a tween.”
“Kíli’s almost thirty years older than you — stop changing the subject.” Thorin revises what he’s irritated at her about. “Why do you need to go to the Shire?”
“Stop saying ‘the Shire’ the way you say ‘Mirkwood,’ if it pleases your lordship,” she says, because she’s a queen now and still can’t be bothered to remember the proper forms of address. “And, ‘need’—“ she makes a considering face. “I want to be there. For when Little One and Little Two are born,” she says, wiggling against him in a way that he’s vaguely aware should remind him that she’s four months along.
Instead, it just makes him aware that she’s naked and in his bed. “Hmm,” he says, palming her hip, marveling anew how it fits to his hand. Dwarves love craftsmanship and care in all things they create, but in the course of his decades he has found nothing so worthy of praise as the way Bilbo molds to him, and he to her, as though wiser hands had planned them both before the dawning of the world.
“Thorin,” Bilbo reproves, but her voice holds laughter, and when he pushes her onto her back, hungry the way he always is, her small hands twist in his hair and pull him closer.
*
The next day, however, he’s forced to confront the fact that she’s serious.
Someone pounds on the door before the red-tinged dawn lamps are lit. “Your Majesties? Her Majesty asked me to wake you, I hope it’s not too early—“
“It’s well too early,” Thorin mutters, but Bilbo makes a pleased noise and rolls out of bed, pulling her robe on as she pads toward the door.
“Dori,” she greets him. “Thank you so much. Come in.”
And come in he does, his arms full of what seem to be rags but are, upon closer inspection, Bilbo’s old traveling clothes. Thorin recognizes that thrice-bedamned waistcoat which Bilbo had worn for the entirety of their journey and which had caused a great deal of confusion when she’d lost all the buttons and revealed, rather dramatically, that she was in fact female. Thorin had dragged Gandalf aside, berating him for the better part of an hour for letting a Hobbit-lass — surely as rare and valuable amongst her kind as dwarf-women were amongst his — go on this journey.
“She’s from a long line of adventurous Tooks, and she just saved your life. For the second time, by my count,” Gandalf said, as Thorin was taking another deep breath. “Besides, Hobbit-lasses are as common as Hobbit-lads — quite unremarkable, really.”
Thorin had gaped at Gandalf, wordless in the face of Bilbo being anything like common or unremarkable; wordless in the face of his own relief at having a reason he could’ve hidden behind for his dread at Bilbo’s continued presence in their Company. Thorin had known, in a distant sort of way, that the Quest for Erebor might kill them all; he forded streams and hunted for food and accepted, every night, that he might be leading his nephews and kinfolk to their deaths. But softly and secretly, the way he — she, apparently — had done everything, Bilbo had become the loss Thorin could not tally; to find a reason to leave Bilbo behind only to have it snatched away from him was a cruelty Thorin should have expected from the Wizard.
“Yes, I thought so,” Gandalf had said, infuriating, before he wandered off.
“What are you doing?” Thorin asks Bilbo now, who is burbling at Dori about fabrics.
“Arranging for a decent traveling cloak,” Bilbo replies. “Perhaps fur-lined, that would be very smart.“
“And sensible, in view of the weather we’re likely to suffer on the journey,” Dori nods, writing something down in a little book. “There’s a weaver in Esgaroth who’s quite reasonable—“
“‘We’?” Thorin asks carefully, still unwilling to get up but increasingly aware that events are developing in a way he should probably shout about.
Dori blinks at him, twice. “Your Majesty,” and of course of all people it’s bloody Dori who always gets the address right and makes Thorin feel like he’s a dwarrow learning etiquette and protocol from old Groin, “You’re not suggesting Her Majesty goes back to the Shire unattended?”
“I’m not suggesting she goes at all,” Thorin growls, and throws off the bedcovers. Dori just sniffs, no doubt irate that his plans to make Bilbo an entirely new wardrobe are being thwarted, but Bilbo turns bright red. Thorin takes brief pleasure in the fact that he can still fluster her by standing up without trousers.
“I am going, we settled this last night,” she says, and despite her blush there’s that damnable tilt to her chin.
“Dori, leave us for a moment,” Thorin sighs.
“If I could just get her measurements very quickly—“ he tries, but he gives up when Thorin crosses his arms. “Aye, Your Majesty,” he grumbles.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Bilbo points out as the door closes. She’s fussing with her decrepit old clothes, and Thorin can’t tell if it’s because he’s bare-arsed or because she’s choosing this as one of the many, many things she’s going to be unreasonably stubborn about. Either way, he goes to her and rests his chin on the top of her head, wraps his arms around her, locks her away for a few precious moments. She used to complain about it, but now she tangles her fingers in his.
“I need a midwife,” she says into their clasped hands. “And there are none to be had in the mountain.”
“What’s a midwife?” Thorin asks.
“That would be part of the problem,” Bilbo tells him. She turns in his arms, still holding one of his hands. “Hobbits don’t — we don’t,” she corrects herself, “Give birth so easily as you, for all we do it more often. And I’d be easier in my mind if I had aid.”
“Óin could not aid you?” Thorin asks. The idea of Óin speaking to Bilbo about anything related to childbirth is horrifying, but it’s a solution that at least has the advantage of not sending her halfway across the world.
Bilbo winces. “I don’t believe you can possibly imagine how much Óin cannot help me,” she says. “Nor the fine herb-witches of Laketown. This is hobbit business, and a hobbit midwife is what I want.”
He examines her face, sees in it no deviousness or deception; he has known her long enough to have seen both. She is determined, and sorrowful in the slant of her mouth, regret at leaving pulling down her smile. He touches her lip gently and nods. “Then we shall depart, with all haste.”
“What?” she blinks, huge and alarmed. “We?”
*
It’s recorded as the most involved and complex shouting match between His and Her Majesty in the First Year, though it’s far from the loudest or the longest — the loudest was, according to Ori, their argument about what crown Bilbo would wear at the wedding (Bilbo wanted no crown, Thorin wanted her wearing the Queen’s Diadem with a few new rubies set in just to make a point), while common consensus holds that their longest was over what kind of berry bushes ought to be planted in the new gardens (Bilbo wanted gooseberries, Thorin wanted something that wasn’t obviously made up).
This argument’s place is earned by the fact that every cursed dwarf with a few hairs on his chin feels compelled to put in a word.
“Impossible,” Balin scoffs, still poring over the Esgaroth contracts. “The King of the Seventh Kingdom, last and mightiest of the dwarven realms, Erebor the Reconquered, doesn’t heave himself about to go fetch back a bunch of hobbit nursemaids.” That does bring him up, squinting thoughtfully. “What do you call a group of hobbits?”
“A nuisance,” growls Dwalin from behind Thorin’s right shoulder, where he’s been since Thorin was thrown out of his own chambers by Bilbo and Dori, of all people, earlier this morning.
“Surely Erebor can survive without me for a few months,” Thorin tries, but Balin swivels on his stool and fixes Thorin with a disapproving look, fingers drumming impatient on the parchment.
“Laddie, you’ve done the impossible and brought us to a life I’d never let myself dream of. Erebor is free and will thrive once more under the house of Durin. But would it survive without you, so new in its rebirth?”
He gets to his feet and pulls a tome from one of the shelves, opening it to reveal Ori’s careful script. Names alongside ages and professions and needs — the page Balin’s opened runs top to bottom, crammed to the last with information. Thorin takes the book from Balin and flips through it; every page is full.
“This is our sixth such record-book since the doors reopened,” Balin says. “More of our people come every day, every hour. I’ve heard of dwarves leaving the smiths of men with naught but the clothes on their backs and the boots on their feet, called home to us. And you are their king.”
“I am a husband, and hope to be a father,” Thorin says, as his fingers touch the ink of those names.
“And you’ll be both, laddie,” Balin says. “But you’ll do it here.”
*
Unfortunately, the rest of the Company seems to be in various states of preparedness. “Of course we’re going,” Bofur says. He’s hunched over a drafting table, charting out the latest mithril seam that’s been reopened; all around are other charts, shaded to show the three planes of a seam’s run in the two dimensions that paper affords. The new mines are faring well under Bofur’s eye — the dwarves returning to Erebor were the sons and grandsons of those who had fled, and they made their living as tinkers and smiths, not miners. Training them to their new professions has slowed exploration, but the old seams still yield ore and jewels to the patient novice.
Bofur jerks his head over his shoulder toward the corner where Bifur is sitting quietly, working at something with his whittling knife. “We’re going to pack up some of Bifur’s soldiers for her cousins and their dwarrows. Or whatever hobbits call them.”
On the hand-carved shelves behind Bifur are are dozens of small figures, carved and painted. Most are dwarves in full battle gear, snarling defiance, but here and there is a man or an elf or a wizard. There are even a few small curly-haired hobbits, brandishing splinter-sized blue blades, though at the moment Bifur is whittling something too big and blocky to be a toy soldier. It looks like—
“Is that an axe head?” Dwalin asks, grabbing it out of Bifur’s hands and brandishing it at Bofur. “Is he carving a wooden copy of the axe head in his head?"
Bifur grabs it back, looking disapproving, and Bofur shrugs. “Some of the children like to dress up as members of the Company.” The dimple in his cheek flashes. “Apparently all three of Laketown’s hat makers have me to thank for some brisk business.”
“All the gods in their halls defend us,” Dwalin mutters.
“So you’d not want to hear about all the children painting your tattoos on their arms and hacking at people with wooden axes and making knuckledusters out of bits of leather and wool, then?” Bofur leans back in his chair. “It’s awfully cute, so’s you know.”
Thorin tries not to think about dwarrows running around pretending to be members of the Company in their spare time. “When did you speak with the Queen?”
“Bilbo asked us last week—” Thorin glares, and Bofur amends with a great, unimpressed sigh, “Her Majesty asked us last week—“
“She asked you last week?” Thorin says.
*
“She asked all of us,” Bombur says, the butcher knife coming down with a thwack on the slab of pork ribs. “She came by, said everyone was going—“
Thorin turns on his heel to glare to Dwalin. “Everyone,” he repeats.
“Is this one of those things I should’ve told you before?” Dwalin asks. “Aye, she asked me. Asked if I’d ask my brother, too. Must’ve slipped my mind, with all your trade talk.”
“Did she tell you she planned to go without me?” Thorin presses.
Bombur and Dwalin share the look of two dwarrows debating which has the better chance of confessing to a misdeed without getting a hiding. At last Dwalin admits, “She may have mentioned that the journey would be of too little consequence to merit Your Majesty’s personal accompaniment.”
“Does this mean Dori’s not going to get us matching cloaks?” Bombur asks, disappointed.
*
Dís is of the same opinion as Balin. “Though it’s not that the mountain cannot spare you, brother dearest,” she says, walking along Jeweler’s Line and nodding her approval, pausing once or twice to advise a young craftsman. Thorin has only ever worked with iron and silver other metals; for all he is their leader, he feels misplaced in this part of the mountain, a stone badly set. But Dís’s pace is steady, assured, and Thorin trails after her whilst trying to appear as though he is not trailing after her.
“It isn’t?” he asks, after a young dwarf who cannot be over thirty has shown Dís a ruby cut in some fine manner that Thorin did not take note of.
“Of course not,” Dís says. “It is Bilbo that Erebor cannot spare. She is not just your wife, Thorin, and she certainly is not just your brood-mare.”
“She is my queen,” Thorin says, impatient, “I know that—“
“I wonder if you do,” Dís says, and leads him down another line, where emeralds are being shaped. “The new dwarves who come in — they are most of them young, too young to remember the Desolation or the slaughter at Azanulbizar. Many of them lived amongst men, born under nothing but sky and clouds. They come here and fear they are not dwarves. But then they see their liege’s wife, the great love of the King Under the Mountain, who stole from a dragon’s horde and helped win the Battle of the Five Armies. They see her and they understand.”
“Understand what?”
Dís nods at another jeweler, his large hands cradling a sparkling jewel the size of his thumb. “That we are a new people, newly reborn. We can honor the old ways without binding ourselves to them. Bilbo is not just a queen, she is a symbol. And that symbol will tarnish if she leaves us.”
Dís’s brand of philosophy has always given Thorin a headache. “Then you do not think I should allow her to go.”
“I do not think you should consider her in terms of what you allow her to do and not,” Dís replies, sharp. “But if I were to counsel her, I would counsel against it.”
*
Mercifully, Glóin has the look of one who is staying put. “Aye, she asked, but my duty is clear,” he says.
“That is good of you,” Thorin nods. “I could wish all the Company were so easy to convince of the wisdom of staying—“
“Staying?” Glóin makes a gargling noise. “You can’t stay. She’s said she needs a midwife, and… herbs and things!”
“Herbs,” Thorin says, hating the uncertainty in his own voice.
“Well, what would I know. My brother’s a healer and even he’s agreed that she needs better hands than his to help her through childbirth.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps — she needs to go! You’d insult your own honor as a father to stay?”
“Watch your tone, cousin,” Dwalin rumbles, but considering the fact that any such talk from someone outside the Company would have a knife at their throats, Thorin’s starting to doubt Dwalin’s loyalty.
“I’ll watch my tone and anything else I like,” Glóin snaps back. “I cannot go because of my duties here. Besides, Gimli’s gotten lost down the mines twice this week and… truth to tell, we’re starting to worry about his earth-sense. But you,” he says, re-inflating and looking Thorin up and down. “Are you crippled?”
“Glóin,” he warns.
“That gut wound still festering somehow? Because I think we all remember this summer’s goings-on all too well, you seemed in fine shape then—“
“Glóin,” Thorin says.
“Your wife will go,” Glóin says, “Then so will you.”
*
Dwalin, who Thorin is now convinced is completely faithless, abandons him at the door to his chambers. “Bid you good evening, Your Majesty,” he says, and disappears down the hall, whistling like the son of a beardless whore he is. Thorin grips the handle to the door and pushes.
His nephews are sitting in his and Bilbo’s chairs by the fire, pipes in hand; the smoke ring that Fíli just blew wavers in the draught from the door and sails across the room before being caught in the vent in the corner and unwinding like so much skeined thread into nothingness. “Doesn’t count!” Kíli protests.
“Does so,” Fíli counters. “You said no pushing it along by flapping my hands. You said nothing about doors.”
“He makes a fair point, Kíli,” Bilbo says, where she is leaned up against a ridiculous number of pillows (even in his childhood, when this was the chamber of the King and his playroom besides, Thorin could never remember so many pillows on the bed) with her own pipe. She catches Thorin’s eye and her mouth twitches, just a bit, and something too-light in Thorin’s stomach settles, weighted down.
“Of course you’d think so,” Kíli says, cheerfully sulking. “Everyone knows you play favorites.”
“No doubt your uncle will side with you,” Bilbo says, still smiling.
“He plays favorites, too.” Kíli glances up at Thorin. “Though I doubt I’m on the list at present.”
“None of you are on the list,” Thorin says, still holding open the door. “Everyone who isn’t my wife, get out.”
Instead of scampering to obey their kin and king, Fíli and Kíli scrunch up their faces in thought. “Your Madge?” Fíli asks Bilbo, drawing on his pipe.
“Be off,” she says, and only then do they clamber to their feet and leave, clapping Thorin on the shoulder in bruising succession.
He shuts the door behind them with more force than is probably necessary; a few of Bilbo’s more frivolous gewgaws shudder on the mantlepiece. “Shall we pick up where we left off?” he says, folding his arms over his chest.
“Where we left off was me throwing you out, and I’m sure you’d like to sleep eventually,” she replies, putting her pipe on the bedside table. She arranges the blankets around her, then looks up at him as though surprised he is still on the other side of the room. “Come here,” she says, and pats the bedspread.
Feeling rather like a dog being summoned, Thorin nevertheless goes and sits, his back pressed against her bent knees. He does not look at her as he says, “If you would take this trip with the Company, and promise to take care for yourself, I will allow—“
“Allow?” she says, knocking her knee against his spine. “You’ll kindly remember that I’m no subject of yours, Thorin Under A Giant Rock, but—“
All of his good intentions are forgotten in the face of her outraged expression. “What have I said about the disrespect you show for the halls of my—“
“The halls of your grandfathers still smell like dragon droppings and so long as they do I’ll call this place a midden heap if I like—“
“Then you can do it from the comfort of horseback as you traipse back to your badger den—“
“It’s a smial, it can’t possibly be difficult for even your knocked-about brain to remember—“
Thorin is distantly aware of a pain at the base of his skull, and he moves his head to feel Bilbo’s fist gripping his hair tightly, her other hand bunched up in his tunic. He’s sprawled across her, between the bracket of her thighs and his own hands are busy at the curve of her elbow and the divot of her knee, pulling her in closer to him. He takes another breath, and another, and looks up to see her grinning.
“Bebother and confusticate you dwarves,” she says, and kisses him on the nose.
He closes his eyes and lays his head on her stomach, hearing the soft hum and gurgle of her body and their children. Her hand in his hair loosens and traces along his ear, and dully he notes it, stores it away along with the smell of her breath and the press of her knees against his sides, cataloguing it for neat retrieval during the long months that she will be gone. “I have not yet been tested by your absence,” Thorin says into the secret of her palm, where it now rests against his cheek. “But you will come back to Erebor greater than when you left. I can promise that much.”
“Oh, Thorin,” she sighs, her thumb brushing against the grain of his beard.
“I’ve endured far worse than the loss of a hobbit,” he says, but his hands around her waist betray him, tightening.
“Well, you’ll endure far worse again,” she says, brisk. “I’m not going.” His hands tighten again, and she twitches. “That tickles,” she complains, and tugs on his braid.
“I was going to appoint you the finest guards,” he says, uncertain, looking up at her. “I was going to buy the swiftest ponies Esgaroth had to offer, and load them with treasures from the mountain so you could buy whatever comforts you desired on the road.”
“Well, if you were going to buy speedy ponies,” Bilbo scoffs, tugging on his braid again. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’m resentful of Fíli’s ability to charm you,” Thorin says. “For the record.”
“It was not Fíli, nor Kíli,” Bilbo replies tartly. “It was my own decision. I’ll send one or two of the Company along to the Shire to see if they can bring back some healers and midwives. There are a few in my family; one or another is bound to come.”
“More adventuresome hobbits,” Thorin says, trying his best to sound displeased.
“We’ll take over your giant rock yet,” she agrees.
*
When Thorin summons the Company to the Lesser Hall and Bilbo explains what she wants done, there is a long silence, followed by thunderous argument.
“I suppose we shouldn’t have expected better,” Bilbo mutters as Óin and Dwalin bellow at each other.
It’s typical, Thorin thinks, and is disgusted with himself for the rush of fondness he feels. “Enough,” he says, once Glóin begins threatening to cut every one of Dori’s braids off and shove them up his jacksie. “This is not a quest for riches or glory, I grant you, but I would have thought at least one of you—“
“You said we could all go!” Ori yelps, from under the arm of where Kíli seems to be trying to strangle him. He seems not to notice, probably toughened from years of being Nori’s little brother; instead he is aiming his wounded cow eyes at Bilbo, who plucks at her sleeves. “You’re not coming?”
“Well,” she says, and clears her throat. “That is, no. I’m not.” Another roar of protest, but all Bilbo has to do is lift her hand for silence. “I’m not, because there are trade routes that still need to be established and new seams that need supervision,” she says. “Not to mention relations with Mirkwood and with Laketown. I am needed here.”
“Those arguments sound familiar,” Thorin says, vowing to send Dís back to the Blue Mountains on the back of a warg at his earliest convenience.
“Do they?” Bilbo says, her voice a little too high. “Well, it’s settled. So, if I am not to leave, one of you must go in my stead and represent my interests.”
Once more Thorin swears at his sister in the privacy of his own head. Represent my interest is a phrase designed to appeal directly to the hindbrain of every dwarf in the room — the honor of being appointed an envoy is one rooted into their culture. In Thror’s prime, there had been days of tournaments to determine who would journey to all corners of Middle-Earth as Erebor’s diplomats.
In the end it is Dwalin and Ori who go — Ori is Bilbo’s pick, and Dwalin is Thorin’s, because Ori is a terrible choice.
“Dwalin is a much more terrible choice,” Bilbo protests later, when the rest of the Company has scattered, still grumbling. “He’ll frighten all my neighbors and eat their food.”
“Ori thinks a slingshot is a suitable weapon of self-defense,” Thorin counters. “Dwalin will make sure he survives the journey there and back again.”
Bilbo opens her mouth to counter, but takes a moment to consider it. “That’s a fair point, I suppose,” she concedes. “Besides, it will please Dís to have someone to irritate on the journey; Ori is far too deferential to dislike her properly.”
“What?” Thorin says.
Which leads to his discovery that his sister is already planning a journey back to Ered Luin, though on the back of a pony. “Did it slip your mind to mention this when we spoke yesterday?” Thorin demands, pushing into Dís’s chambers where she’s calmly directing a bevy of servants into packing various things into crates.
“Of course not,” she says, serene. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d pout almost as much as if Bilbo were coming along. Besides, you can hardly send Ori and Dwalin to the Blue Mountains to collect the rest of our people; there are still over a thousand of them, waiting for word that Erebor can house them.”
Thorin blinks. “Can we?”
“By the new year, we should be well able to take them in and more,” she says. “The mines are progressing well and space has never been a problem; there are still ten thousand empty living chambers in the Heights above us. I’ll not return with more than your mountain can sustain.”
“Our mountain, sister,” Thorin reminds her.
Dis was a toddler when Erebor was taken; Frerin plucked her with shaking hands from the charred arms of their mother, who had shielded her daughter from that terrible first blast of dragon fire. She grew up knowing of Erebor the way so many of their kin knew it; second-hand and too-perfect, a story to tell children. Fíli and Kíli were raised with stones in their bellies, eager to reclaim their homeland, but Dís had only ever wanted a home.
She lifts a dark, braided brow. “So many of us claim ownership,” she comments. “We can hardly call it lonely anymore.”
*
They leave with little fanfare, Dís and Dwalin on sturdy Iron Hill ponies and Ori on a sweet little donkey that he’s apparently named Gandy. Wherever Gandalf’s buggered off to, Thorin hopes he somehow knows about this.
The tempo of the mountain every day seems to increase, their days filled with new problems; the reformation of Erebor’s police force, restoring the old sewers, repairing the crumbling watchtowers. Smaug’s final assault on the secret entrance left shears of rocks crumbled along the mountainside; Bilbo takes over supervising those repairs, ensuring that the tunnel is sealed off permanently.
This leaves them with a problem. The fall of Erebor taught them one lesson about the folly of a single great entrance, and the retaking taught them another. Every exploration into disused and abandoned halls has yielded bodies, centuries dead; for those who had not escaped in the first great flight were trapped between the only entrance and the great worm, and so died not from flame but from hunger or thirst — or simply fear. Thorin works with Bofur to bore new entrances and exits into the mountain, tunnels that can be well-guarded and defended, but that can allow flight if ever a disaster should strike the mountain again.
Added to all this is Durin’s Day fast approaching, and with it the first anniversary of the refounding of Erebor. Bilbo commandeers what seems to be every nonessential dwarf and a few essential ones, aided (of course) by Fíli and Kíli, who have attached themselves to her like two hyperactive carbuncles. She sketches plans for feasts in the Great Halls and fireworks at night, great explosions of green and blue and silver to illuminate the mountainside.
“Though it won’t compare to the shows Gandalf used to give back in the Shire,” Bilbo says, wistful.
“Anything that old—“ goat is how he is going to end that sentence, but Bilbo gives him a look and he amends, “Friend of ours can provide, Erebor will more than match.”
“You do realize that no matter what you do, you’ll never change the fact that he knew me when I was a tenderling running naked along the hedgerows.”
Privately Thorin thinks Bilbo lacks imagination; he absolutely can change that horrifying fact if he tries hard enough. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And also that he will always be taller than you,” Bilbo says blithely, and orders another gross of onions.
Invitations are sent out to the Men of Esgaroth and the dwarves of the Iron Hills, though the thought of Dain exclaiming over Bilbo’s fecundity makes Thorin want to hit something with a hammer. He puts his foot down, however, when he sees her musing over a shiny piece of new parchment.
“For whom is that intended?” he asks. He knows the sheen — it is warg vellum, stripped from the thousands of foul creatures that littered the battlefield after the Victory of the Four Armies. Cured with the cold springs of the mountain and scraped clean by centuries-old lunellim, it is reserved for only their most important missives, proclamations of war and terms of peace.
Bilbo squints up at him while her feet swing freely under the table. She has four of the nocturn lamps clustered around her, and Thorin makes a note to order brighter lights for their chamber, traditional hours bedamned. “Good evening, my lord and king,” she chirps.
Thorin is immediately suspicious. “Indeed,” he says, and sits next to her. This morning he threaded the beads of his line into her hair along her left temple, and she rolled her eyes and complained that the braid would hit her in the face all day, then proceeded to ruin his hard work by putting her hair into a bun so that only the braid lay along the side of her head, the beads hidden. Now she nudges him with her elbow and he sighs, pulling the small silver hairpins out carefully, obedient. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he reminds her.
“Indeed,” she says, mocking, and as he pulls out the last pin she shakes her head, curls bouncing down, her braid swinging loose. But she tucks it behind her ear and says, “I’m writing to Thranduil—“
“Absolutely not,” he announces, because no amount of letting him stroke her hair is going to get him to agree to this.
She pouts, her bottom lip plump and dangerous. “Thorin. I thought the trade negotiations this summer went rather well.”
Thorin scowls, because she knows as well as he that the trade negotiations this summer were cut abruptly short by Bilbo more or less barricading them both in his — now their — quarters, leaving Fíli and Balin and Dís to hammer out a profitable compromise while Thorin was subjected to the most sexually exhausting two weeks of his life. “That doesn’t mean I want him and his weed-eating brethren back.”
“And you wonder why the old alliances were so fragile,” Bilbo says, reproachful. “This is an important party and we’ve invited Dain and Bard to our halls. We would be remiss if we did not extend an invitation to Thranduil. Were Rivendell not so far I would ask Lord Elrond—“
“Absolutely not.” He still remembers coming upon Bilbo chatting happily with Elrond on some balcony overlooking some miserable trees; the elf looked as if he’d have liked nothing better than to stow Thorin’s burglar away in his pocket.
“Well, besides, I wouldn’t want them to get trapped by an early blizzard and have to spend the whole winter here,” Bilbo teases, and Thorin isn’t physically able to suppress the choking noise in the back of his throat at the thought. She laughs, and uncaps her inkwell.
“I thought we just settled this,” Thorin protests, because the first words she’s written in the strange, rounded letters of the halflings are “To The Most Gracious Lord.” Whenever she writes to Bard she starts it with “To the Great Bowman” and when she writes to Dain (which Thorin would very much like to forbid) it is always “My Dear Friend and Cousin” (which Thorin would very much more like to forbid).
“No, you whined at me for a bit and I am inviting him anyway,” Bilbo replies, and Thorin goes to find Glóin — acting as guard-captain in Dwalin’s absence — to see about increasing the number of highly visible weapons each ceremonial guard can get away with carrying during the festivities.
*
Dain, thank Mahal in his dungeons, sends his regrets; there has been an outbreak of coal-lung in the Iron Hills. I would wish Nothing More than to Gaze upon Your Smiling Face once again, Most Precious of Kinfolk, Thorin reads, after Bilbo — smiling and pinkly pleased — hands him the letter, But not for the Riches of the World would I risk Infection to You and Yours. Pray think of me alone and Pining for your soft Laughter in my Lonesome Halls—
“Was that truly necessary?” Bilbo asks as Thorin chucks the letter into the fire.
“Yes,” he says decisively, “As is this,” and he drags Bilbo out of her chair and into their bed.
*
Whatever triumph Thorin feels at Dain’s absence is crushed when, on the eve of Durin’s Day, a dozen riders from Mirkwood are reported from one of the westernmost watchtowers. “Shall we shoot them, sire?” asks one of their archers, hopeful, as they watch them approach the gates. The early dawn light seems to limn them with gold and their horses have all been magicked into walking in step as though they were a set of Bifur’s clever toys.
Thorin, who was roused five minutes earlier, mutters “Would that we could,” as Bilbo snaps, “No.” The gates are opened and Bilbo hurries down to the inner courtyard to greet them, ordering Thorin not to follow her because she’s fairly certain she saw a barrel strapped to one of the horses.
Thranduil has not come. “My lady,” Legolas says, bowing low though not, well for him, trying to grab at Bilbo’s hand. “My father regrets that he cannot join you on this great occasion, and sends me in his stead.”
“Oh, how lovely,” Bilbo says. Thorin watches from the stairwell as she bites her lip, clearly trying to remember if she’s supposed to curtsey back.
“I rejoice in the news of your recent marriage,” Legolas continues, “And may I say that you are looking particularly, ah…”
He stalls out, and for for the first time in his entire life Thorin feels some form of affection for an elf as the prince rummages around for a phrase that isn’t “enormous.”
“Gravid,” Legolas settles on, and the expression on Bilbo’s face as she tries not to laugh may make this entire debacle worth it.
Thorin is less sanguine when it turns out there is, in fact, a barrel. “Is this a joke?” Thorin rumbles, coming down the last few steps as elvish lackeys unstrap it from a very put-upon horse and set it on the courtyard stone.
Legolas bows to him, too. “Your Majesty,” he says, looking awkward. “It is — my father’s gift,” and once again Thorin is irritated by the fellow-feeling he’s forced to endure. Back when he was just a dwarrow-lad, Erebor received a state visit from the strange Men of Gondor; his grandfather, never able to remember how brief shone the candle of Men’s lives, heard that their Steward was a mere sixty-five years of age and refused to meet with him, roaring that sending such a lad was tantamount to a declaration of war. It seems a constant among all the races of Middle-Earth that children will be forever embarrassed by the antics of their parents.
So rather than shutting the gates and killing everyone, Thorin merely says, “Indeed?” and ignores Bilbo’s muttered, “Oh, graces and spirits defend us.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The princeling at least looks miserable; although Thorin still recalls his history lessons and knows that Legolas of the Greenleaf is older than the Third Age, he feels a strange impulse to clap him on the shoulder and tell him he’s a good lad.
“Well, thank you very much, anyway,” Bilbo says, and rams Thorin in the side with her elbow because she never had any history lessons and refers to Legolas as “that poor child.”
Just then there’s a clattering from within and Kíli trips into sight, his hair damp, boots half-laced and his tunic on backward. “Uncle, is she—“ and he skids to a halt in front of the delegation. “Um,” he adds.
“Well put,” Thorin says. “Your Highness, I’m sure you remember another one of your guests from last year.”
“The shouty one,” Legolas agrees.
“My lord,” Kíli says, bowing low, but his eyes are flicking around the courtyard. “Is — this all of you?”
“I fear so,” Legolas answers. “Did you expect an addition to our party?”
Kíli’s face falls. “I thought perhaps Tauriel—“
He is, sadly, too far away to kick, but Thorin glares fiercely at him anyway. He should’ve sent the brat off with Dís back to the Blue Mountains, but Kíli would probably have fallen in love with a cave troll or an Ent on the way. It is only by some stroke of providence that Kíli didn’t fall in love with some elf-maid in Rivendell, or Thorin would probably be chewing lettuce at some horrible wedding shower this very moment.
“No, of course not,” Bilbo says, grabbing onto Kíli’s elbow and yanking him to her side. “We are delighted to have you. Please don’t mind Kíli, he was struck a terrible blow in the Battle last year and sometimes spouts absolute nonsense.” This last is hissed at Kíli, who at least looks chastised.
“It’s true,” Kíli says, too quickly. “Healers have tried everything to cure me of it.”
“Perhaps one of our fallaner could see to him,” Legolas offers, too solemn to be anything but mocking, though it’s not as though Thorin has any grounds to take offense. “They are well-versed in every form of illness and injury.”
“What a generous offer,” Bilbo says. “Kíli, if you would show our honored guests their chambers?”
The elves sweep past, one of them carrying the damned barrel over a shoulder. Thorin can hear Kíli’s hopeful questions about how the Guards of Mirkwood are fairing and Legolas’s bemused replies before they are mercifully silenced by the doors swinging shut once more.
“Well,” Bilbo says. “I thought that went rather well.”
Thorin stares at her for a moment, then begins to laugh, lacing his fingers with hers and drawing her close for a kiss. She submits to it as she always does, laughing in her turn and flicking his braid out of his face, and he thinks that if Erebor had remained lost — if he roamed the wilderness for another century — he would still know joy this perfect, if she were there, too.
*
The feast that night is, even matched against the hazy memories of his youth, stupendous. Food of every kind is set on the stone tables of the Feasting Hall and for the first time since coming home, Thorin stands on the great dais and takes in the enormity of his kingdom — his people. Every few minutes another member of the Company gives a speech about their Quest, the adventures they managed to survive. Tomorrow will be more serious — a day of reflection upon the past and an avowal toward the future, the Day of Two Years — but tonight there is riotous merry-making.
“I’m touched that you’ve given me place of honor,” Bard says, seated to his left. His gangle of legs are shoved under the table and his ill-advised and frankly pathetic attempts at growing a beard seem at last to have run their course; he looks almost reputable. “Though it may’ve been a tactical error to hand the elf over to your queen.”
Thorin can’t help liking the man, child though he is and thorn though he has been. There is something in Bard that speaks of confidence without ambition; they share a similar inheritance, but Bard has made no move to reclaim the lordship of Dale. It is true that the Men of Erasgoth have begun planning the restoration of the great city-state in the coming years with the wealth won from the Mountain; for all the dragon’s destruction, much of the stone city still stands. But though he has spearheaded these plans, Bard seems unmoved by the calls to take up the lordship of his forefathers. It seems clear that it is this disinterest that will make him a remarkable ruler.
Thorin glances to his right, where Bilbo seems to be advising Legolas on how to make lembas taste more palatable. “You’re only seated there because Gandalf never arrived,” he tells Bard. “Otherwise we’d have you down with the the other little lordlings.” He nods at the table directly below the dias, where Glóin’s and Bombur’s brood are having a belching competition with Bain, Sigrid and Tilda. The little girl seems to be winning, if the cheers are any indication.
“Fair enough,” Bard allows, grinning. “But you’re not usually so—“ he pauses, and takes a diplomatic swig of ale. “Well,” he concludes, shrugging.
Thorin wishes he could pretend not to know what he means, but he sighs and admits, “I’ve been informed that in the past when my wife has spoken to a male, I’ve acted not unlike a constipated badger.”
Bard laughs, loud even in the din of the hall, and laughs again a few minutes later as fourteen of Erebor’s youngest dwarrows reenact the Battle of Trollshaw, with Bain and two of his friends playing the parts of the trolls.
“Did you put them up to this?” Thorin asks Bilbo, as the smallest dwarrow tries to recite a poem (in passable amphibrachic verse) about the terrible stench of dwarves while the rest of them hop around in potato sacks shrieking about how they’re infested with worms in their tubes.
“Can I be blamed if the young people are inspired by my quick thinking and grace under pressure?” she replies innocently, grabbing at another chicken leg.
Thorin narrows his yes. “Yes,” he says, and is about to expound when there’s a flare of bright light from the door, and a voice says, “The dawn will take you all.”
“Gandalf!” Bilbo cries.
“I doubt it,” Thorin says.
But it is. The fifteenth dwarrow trailing behind him is dressed up in a silver tunic that no doubt belongs to her father, with a staff inlaid with silver and gold, dragging a beard made out of an old knitted scarf that’s twice her height. As for Gandalf, he looks the same as he ever did: as though he’d slept a week straight under a hedge and washed up in a coal sluice.
“Your stand-in is better dressed for our table than you,” Thorin greets him as he approaches the table, one hand companionable on the child’s shoulder.
“Fortunately, Her Majesty’s invitation made no mention of a dress code,” Gandalf replies, serene.
“Am I off to the lordling table?” Bard asks.
But instead Gandalf takes a seat near the end, apathetic toward protocol and chatting happily with Bifur over some buttered parsnips and wine. He gives his fair share of toasts and tells more than his fair share of stories, but Thorin leans back and finds himself laughing along with the rest of the hall. At some point Bilbo’s hand finds his and he looks up to find her smiling at him, radiant and pleased. He strokes his thumb along her palm, surprised all over again at its softness. In dwarves and men, it would be the indication of a too-comfortable life, but he has seen the work Bilbo has done, during their hopeless Quest and in their hopeful kingdom. He raises her hand to his lips and kisses it, reverent.
“Charmer,” Bilbo murmurs.
He’s interrupted from charming her further by a furious, if muffled, argument happening at the lordling table — Gimli is struggling to get to his feet, with Bain and Tilda dragging at his elbows. Bofur is just wrapping up his account of their escape from “the Lord of Mirkwood’s hospitality” (which Legolas at least looked embarrassed about), and in the riotous applause and laughter it’s hard to hear Gimli’s shouting.
Not for long, though. “Your Majesties!” Gimli says, still grappling with Bain and his sister, “I request — get off — I request a boon — I’ll slice your nadgers off,” he hisses at the two children.
Bain lets him go, but Tilda snaps, “I don’t have nadgers, you hairy little shrub, and you’re being ridiculous!”
“Oh dear,” Bilbo murmurs, then raises her voice. “What boon would you ask of us, Gimli?”
Gimli finally shakes free of Tilda and points at Legolas. “I wish to address the Prince of Mirkwood.”
Thorin looks over at Legolas; the princeling blinks back, clearly baffled. “Very well,” Thorin says, cautiously. “Make your address.”
“Oh,” Gimli says, much quieter now, though his voice carries all too well in the ringing silence of the hall. “I thought — perhaps in private?”
“A bit late for that,” Thorin says, dry.
Gimli clears his throat. “Very well. Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of Mirkwood, for the honor of my mother, whose beauty you impugned in the forests of Mirkwood and whose honor I now restore by challenging you, I, er, challenge you.”
“Oh dear,” Bilbo says. Out of the corner of his eye Thorin can see Gandalf lighting his pipe and getting comfortable.
“So much honor in such a little creature,” Thorin hears Legolas murmur. He’s too busy swallowing his own tongue in combined rage and mortification to respond.
“Glóin!” Bilbo hisses, leaning across the table to scowl at Gimli’s father. “What in heaven’s name is he talking about?”
Glóin, for his part, is still seated, his fingers laced over his stomach. Himlis has covered her face with her hands. Thorin suspects the shaking of her shoulders is not despairing tears but hysterical laughter. “I may’ve shared with my son the tale of a certain spirited exchange of ideas I was honored to have with his Highness,” Glóin says, eyebrows lifted in an expression of innocence that’s about as convincing as an orc’s. “The prince liberated from me a picture I carried close to my heart of my dear treasure, and commented upon her visage. During the course of that conversation, it may have come to pass that I learned of the differing standards of beauty prized by dwarves and elves.”
“I believe I called her hideous,” Legolas says, low, to Bilbo and Thorin. “For which I am very sorry,” he adds quickly.
“I am banishing that whole family,” Thorin mutters.
“You can’t do that, Óin’s the only one who knows how to make that blister ointment,” Bilbo says absently. She turns to Legolas. “My lord, I am most profoundly sorry for—“ she waves her hands, “Every single thing that is happening at this moment.”
But where his father would have pouted and stomped off, Legolas smiles at her, with a worrying twinkle in his eye. “With your permission, my lady, my lord, I will accept his challenge. I do not wish the little one to feel he is not being taken seriously.”
“He shouldn’t be taken seriously!” Bilbo protests.
“He’s sixty-three,” Thorin feels obliged to point out.
Legolas ignores them both and gets to his feet. “Gimli, son of Glóin, son of Groin, I accept your challenge, on the condition that you explain to me the terms. Such challenges are unknown among my people.”
Himlis is now being thumped on the back by Óin.
“Er. The terms are as follows,” Gimli says, shuffling his feet. “We… fight?” This is asked with a slight nod from Glóin, whom Thorin truly is going to throw out of Erebor. Possibly from off the battlements. “And if I win, you will make humble apology to my mother for your impertinence.”
“And if I win?” Legolas asks, cocking his head.
Gimli’s gaze flicks back to his father, panicked — clearly this possibility didn’t occur to either of them. Thorin rubs at the bridge of his nose.
“If you win,” Himlis says, still wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, “Then Gimli will serve as your page and squire until such time as you see fit to release him.”
This causes some controversy. “Over my dead body,” Glóin roars, thumping his fist on the table, and the rest of the Company chimes in with suggestions or protests of their own.
But Himlis glares them all down. “Since it is my honor that seems to lie in this balance, I’ll dictate what shall restore it,” she says, “And as for you, husband and dearest treasure of my heart, your dead body can be easily arranged, so don’t think for a moment I won’t go over it.”
“And what of the right of champion?” Gandalf says, examining his pipe closely.
“The right of champion?” Legolas echoes. He turns to Fíli on his right, who’s spent the entire discussion with his forehead on the table.
“As the one being challenged,” Fíli says, not lifting his head, “You have the right to appoint someone else to fight for you, should you feel you are outmatched by your opponent.”
“Interesting,” Legolas says.
“Allow me to make a suggestion,” Gandalf starts.
The Durin line has long borne the gift of prophecy, though it manifests in stutters and droughts; generations born with nothing more than a sense of when a seam will peter out, followed by a trio of siblings who can predict the wax and wane of kingdoms. His cousin Óin can read the portents and his brother Frerin knew, as their family marched to Khazad-dûm, that only Thorin would march home again. “Tell Dís not to weep for us,” Frerin had said, a broad smile upon his beardless face. “Not that she will. She’ll far more likely break an axe over your head.” And so she had — before falling to her knees, a widow and orphan and sister in mourning, all at once.
Thorin knows the gift runs true, but he never saw the things made his brother’s eyes burn bright; he’s sat with Óin during long nights waiting for the smoke of sacred incense to reveal some secret and felt only the cold seeping into his bones. Nevertheless, in this moment he knows with the certainty of the the most powerful seers of his lineage that no matter what Gandalf’s suggestion is, it will end with someone losing an ear.
So he says, “I submit myself, my lord, as your champion.”
If the hall was quiet before, the beat of the mountain’s heart can be felt in the silence now. Gimli looks set to soil his breeches.
Legolas, still standing, turns slowly to make an indescribably hilarious expression of surprise. “You?” he says, adding belatedly, “My lord?”
Thorin leans back in his seat. “If you will do me the honor,” he says, tilting up his chin.
Legolas shuts his eyes. “Of course, my lord.”
Bard leans in. “You look just like your wife when you do that,” he says.
*
“Two days in a row of waking up at dawn seems a bit much,” Bilbo mumbles the next morning. Her face is almost entirely buried in her pillow, though there is one baleful eye visible through a thatch of brown curls.
Thorin sits back down on the bed, pulling on his boots. “It is not yet dawn, to be fair.”
“Confounderate you dwarves and your duels of honor,” Bilbo moans, rolling onto her back and shuffling still deeper into the bedcovers. “Wake me if you get stabbed.”
“I won’t get stabbed.”
From beneath the covers, Bilbo huffs. “Well, of course you won’t.” She pokes her head out again. “And don’t stab Gimli, poor lad already thinks you hate him.”
“He was too young to go with us on the Quest,” Thorin protests, for what feels like the seventeenth time. “His parents decided—“
“Yes, and apparently he spent a month after his father left with you crying in his rooms. Himlis had to promise him that one day he could go on a quest, too. Which reminds me, in fifty years or so you’ll need to think up a quest for Gimli to go on. Are there any long-forgotten treasures of Erebor that need finding?”
“None spring to mind.”
“Well, we have a little time.” Bilbo yawns. “I suppose you want me to come with you,” she says, sounding accusing.
Thorin shrugs. “If you would prefer to lie abed, I cannot fault you. I’ll send Fíli or Kíli to inform you if I am killed or excessively maimed—“
“You know, this sense of humor you’re developing is absolutely dreadful,” Bilbo complains.
“Gandalf will be in attendance, as well; you could not speak long with him last night.”
“Gandalf will no doubt overstay his welcome and afford me ample opportunity to talk with him at my leisure, therefore yawning through a conversation before decent folk have had their breakfasts does not particularly appeal.”
“There may also be food there,” Thorin says. There probably won’t be — the Lesser Dueling Chamber is far from the kitchens — but a happy marriage thrives on hope.
Bilbo harrumphs, and flings back the covers. “Help me up.”
*
Gimli and his parents have already arrived; along with Legolas, Fíli, and Kíli, the three of whom seem to have struck up a very unnerving friendship. “Gandalf swore at us when we knocked on his chamber door, so I don’t think he’ll be joining us,” Fíli reports.
Bilbo’s expression, when Thorin looks down at her, is eloquent.
“But, like the loyal nephews we are, we decided to come along,” Kíli says cheerfully, handing Thorin a dueling axe. “We reckoned if Gimli overpowers you, we can always reenact the Battle of Five Armies and lay down our lives in your defense. That way Legolas at least has a good story to tell when he explains to his father why he had to apologize to a dwarf on this trip.”
“And honestly, better you should lose, Uncle,” Fíli adds, “Else Legolas will have to explain to his father why he’s being followed around by a insolent dwarrow-lad who mutters curses at him under his breath.”
“I’m not accustomed to losing,” Thorin warns.
“Indeed, and while the addition of a dwarf to my household might present its challenges, I’d far prefer you win, my lord,” Legolas says. “Your nephews are quite mistaken when they suppose that my father would accept news of my apology with any degree of… equanimity.”
“I believe it,” Thorin says, testing the axe’s balance.
Bilbo crosses her arms. “You’re going to fight Gimli with that thing?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s bigger than he is!”
“Be fair, Bilbo,” Kíli says, “Gimli’s axe is bigger than he is, too.”
“Now now,” Fíli protests, “Everyone knows it’s not about the size of the axe, but what you—“
“It’s specially made,” Thorin interrupts, handing Bilbo the axe. She takes it gingerly.
“Oh,” she says. “It’s — very light.”
“Flimsy, too,” Thorin says, “Made to break in three or four strong blows. And the blade’s duller than a butterknife—”
“Of course dwarves have special dueling axes,” Bilbo grumbles, handing it back.
Thorin smiles, steps back far enough to try a basic block formation. He can hear Glóin muttering something about intimidation tactics, but ignores it. “Dwarves are warm in blood and temper, and duels of this nature are common.”
“Aye,” Fíli says. “If we fought them with real weapons, we’d have died out long ago.”
“The first duel I fought was before we’d settled in Ered Luin,” Kíli tells Bilbo. “Had to fight it with a stick. My challenger had a table leg.”
“What did you do?” Bilbo says, narrowing her eyes.
Kíli makes an exaggerated gesture of injured innocence, which Fíli negates by telling her, “He cut off his tutor’s beard.”
“Accidentally,” Kíli lies.
At long last, Gimli seems to gather his courage and stands at the center of the room. “By right of arms and honor,” he says, voice breaking only a little bit, “I challenge — uh — my lord Thorin Oakenshield.”
“King Thorin,” Fíli shouts from the sidelines.
“King, yes, of course,” Gimli stammers. “My lord King Thorin Oaken—”
“Son of Thror, son of Thrain,” Kíli prompts him. “You can’t forget that, were you raised in a troll cave?”
“My lord King Thorin,” Gimli says, looking near tears, “Son of Thror, son of Thrain—”
“And Founder of the New Kingdom of Erebor,” Fíli chides. “Honestly, Gimli.”
“My lord, um—“
“All right, yes,” Thorin sighs. “And I accept this challenge of Gimli, son of Glóin, son of Groin. Shall we begin?”
Gimli nods, and heaves his axe into a defensive position. Thorin moves to strike at his unprotected shoulder but pauses; Gimli has not moved, and is simply standing there, eyes — Mahal in his dungeons, Thorin thinks sourly — squeezed tightly shut, waiting for the blow.
“Difficult to fight if you can’t see,” he comments, and pulls back.
Gimli squints one eye half-open. “It’s an act of treason to take arms against the royal line,” he says, with the cadence of a parroted lesson.
“What?” Glóin yelps from the other end of the room. “Who told you that piece of driveling dreck?”
“I did,” Himlis says. “So unfortunate. I discovered an old law from the founding of Durin’s line that all who would take up arms against their rightful liege were guilty of treason. Punishable by exile or death.”
“You did not,” Glóin says, though he sounds more awed than disbelieving.
“As chief zarabul of our laws and histories, I should challenge you to a duel for calling me a liar,” Himlis tells her husband, sweetly. Glóin kisses her soundly on the cheek.
“So does this mean I can go back to bed?” Bilbo asks. “Or at least get something to eat?”
*
Legolas remains in Erebor for another four days, all blessedly uneventful. Relations are, in fact, considerably improved by Legolas’s revelation that the stupid barrel actually contains the weapons and armor that Thranduil confiscated, smelling only slightly of stale beer. “The barrel was my father’s gift,” Legolas says, “And this is mine.” Even Balin seems to approve.
Mostly the princeling entertains himself by 1) making more and more outrageous bets with Kíli over feats of archery, usually involving dangling from a high ledge upside down and hitting a butterfly on the wing a quarter-furlong away and 2) tormenting Gimli, whose parents are adamant that he honor the terms and so is now a scowling part of the elf’s retinue.
Thorin is ill-schooled in elvish facial expressions — to him they always look like they’re nobly suffering some embarrassing venereal disease — but he’s fairly certain that Legolas finds the situation delightful.
“Gimli, my wineglass has a spot on it,” he says. They are once again all seated at the high table; the feast of Durin’s Day itself is quieter and more formal, with speeches about loyalty and sacrifice, tradition and respect. Hardly anyone has thrown up or passed out.
Gimli takes the glass the elf hands him and stalks off, no doubt wishing he could break it over Legolas’s head. Kíli, acting as the royal squire tonight, makes a tsking sound from behind them.
Bard leans over. “My lord, if you’ll forgive me saying so,” he says to Legolas, “This borders on abuse.”
“It did have a spot on it,” Legolas says, defensive.
“Of course it did,” Kíli says. “I made sure of it.”
Bilbo, for her part, drops a chicken bone in Thorin’s own glass. “Oh look,” she says, holding it out to Kíli.
Kíli scowls and grabs at it. “I should’ve broken every bit of your crockery when I had the chance,” he mutters.
“Too late now,” Bilbo says. “Off you go. Make sure Gimli doesn’t get lost on his way to the kitchens again.”
Thorin steals Bilbo’s wineglass. “You shouldn’t have any, anyway,” he says at her protest. “In your condition.”
“You won’t be having any in any condition, I can promise you,” Bilbo retorts.
Bard nearly chokes to death on a grape.
*
Although Legolas privately assures Thorin that nothing short of a decree from Valinor could persuade him to take a dwarf back with him to Mirkwood —
“He’d probably try to cut a tree down and then we’d have to stone him ritually.”
Thorin frowns. “You stone people for chopping down trees?”
“…No?” Legolas says.
— no one ever gets around to telling Gimli. Legolas seems not to realize, Thorin thinks it serves him right, and Bilbo is too busy spending most of her free hours gossiping with Gandalf before he runs off again to notice. Glóin and Himlis find the whole thing hilarious.
“I gave him one of my old axes last night and told him to make the family proud, even though he’d probably not see us again until we gathered in the Halls of Mandos,” Glóin says, during their morning security meeting. The elves, and Gandalf with them, are due to leave shortly; apparently Gimli is still in his rooms, trying to decide which helmet to pack.
Thorin bites at this inside of his cheek. “Truly, cousin,” he says, “I look to you as an example of fatherhood in all ways.”
“See that you do,” Glóin says.
They adjourn early in order to see the elves off. Himlis is already there, helping Gimli affix his bags to the back of a large grey stallion, which is probably the elves’ idea of a joke. Legolas is already mounted on his own horse, watching Gimli with a puzzled twist to his brow; when Bilbo arrives with Gandalf in tow, he opens his mouth to say something.
Gandalf waves him quiet. “Well Gimli,” he says, clapping Gimli on the shoulder. “You’ve begun your new life. In a few decades you’ll make a truly exceptional squire, and who knows? Perhaps after two hundred years or so my lord Legolas will release you, and you can come back here to the Lonely Mountain to die amongst what family you’ll have left.”
“What family I have left,” Gimli repeats blankly.
“Well, your parents will be long dead by then. After all, even to dwarves, two centuries is a long time. But still, better that you spoke your heart to the prince of Mirkwood and withstood the consequences like the noble’s son you are.”
Gimli nods, staring at the ground.
“This is very cruel,” Bilbo mutters, but when Thorin looks over it is to observe her fighting a smile.
“Unless…” Gandalf says, musingly.
Gimli’s head shoots up. “Unless?” he says.
Gandalf makes a dismissive sound. “It’s a ridiculous notion, really. But,” and he leans down, whispering hoarsely, “You know how proud the elvish folk can be. Perhaps, if you apologized to the princeling, he might release you from your duty and you could remain here.” Gandalf straightens up. “Of course, I can understand that you’d wish to honor your vows. But only yesterday your mother was telling me how much she’d miss you, how she would weep day and night for your return—“
Thorin glances over at Himlis as Gandalf prattles on, an eyebrow cocked. She shakes her head minutely.
“—so perhaps, Gimli son of Glóin, you should think where your greater duty lies. With your own honor, which a thing fleeting and ill-remembered; or the responsibility you owe to your family and kingdom?”
Gimli almost trips over himself hastening over to Legolas, who has dismounted and listens to his apology with his hands clasped before him. He murmurs something in response, and all the tension seems to run out of Gimli like water, though he does his best to seem nonchalant as he bolts back to the horse (which, judging by the way it nudges at the wizard’s pockets for treats, was clearly intended for Gandalf in the first place) to untie his bags.
Legolas approaches, and makes a bow. “Your Majesties,” he says. “I look forward to news of your children. May their days be blessed and yours be ones of peace and plenty.”
“And to you,” Thorin begins, but Bilbo tugs Legolas down and presses a fond kiss on his cheek.
“You’ve done your father proud,” she says, ignoring protocol and what ought to be said the way she always does; when Thorin first announced their betrothal, Balin broached the idea of etiquette classes, to school the halfling in the ways of dwarvish nobility. Bilbo had laughed at him for ten minutes straight.
Her words seem to trouble the elf, however. “I believe you are right, and yet my conscience is not clear,” he says. “Pray excuse me.”
“You do realize that one of these days Balin will simply lock you in a room somewhere and pile books about ceremonial greeting and farewell protocols on your head until you agree to read them,” Thorin tells her.
“And you do realize that I’ll just threaten to show him my breasts and he’ll break open the door with his nose,” Bilbo replies. “Now hush, I want to hear what they’re saying.”
Legolas has approached Himlis, who is supervising her son’s work removing his bags. “My lady,” Legolas says, going gracefully down one knee, “Before I take my leave, I must seek your most merciful pardon for the thoughtless falsehoods I heaped upon you many months ago, before I was ever privileged to know you. When I offended you to your husband, I spoke out of malice and a petty desire to offend. Now with time has come some little wisdom, and I wish most heartily to make amends to you and your family for my dishonorable words. I am a callow and foolish creature, yet already I have begun to learn that it is the goodness that shines from within them that grants dwarves exceptional beauty that fades with time no more than the light of the Valar or the song of the Creator.”
Himlis looks to Bilbo, who shrugs. “Well, that’s all right then,” she says, and pats Legolas awkwardly on the head.
*
A raven arrives with the first frost of the new year with a message from Dís; one of the servants presents it to Thorin while they’re sharing a quiet meal in their quarters, something Bilbo seems to prefer more often these days.
“What does she say?” Bilbo asks, plucking the letter out of his hand.
“It was addressed to me,” Thorin observes mildly.
“Marriage means that there is only ever we, my dearest,” Bilbo says. She scans the letter and begins to laugh.
Thorin tries to snatch the letter back. “What?”
“Eat your chicken,” Bilbo says, and clears her throat. “‘Have reached the Halls, after depositing Dwalin and Ori in amongst the hobbits,’” she reads. “‘Ori’s the only one they’ll talk to; they’re terrified of Dwalin and weren’t sure what to make of me, though the gardener who’s been taking care of Bilbo’s little cave is civil enough, and after reading Bilbo’s letter has given them the run of it’ — oh good lord, poor Hamfast. I do hope they didn’t give him too much of a fright. Where was I… ‘Tell Bilbo all seemed in order, though truth be told I would not know what would be missing. There were a great deal of knitted things. Expect their message when they traverse once more through Rivendell, which you might have mentioned smells distressingly of leaf mold.’” Bilbo makes a disapproving sound. “Honestly, dwarves.”
“It does smell of leaf mold,” Thorin points out.