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Bilbo knew… from the second the rough demeanour dropped and Thorin Oakenshield, destined King under the Mountain, sung straight from the soul in his living room… he knew that his breath would be held until this being of tenseness found peace. Until he could keep that smile, the one shared with his kin after their song, on the dwarf’s face longer than a fleeting memory of something good could last.
Not that it was a conscious decision, no- Bilbo resented the dwarf and his air of presumptuousness and his judgmental nature for a good part of their journey’s early stages. But of course, it became like a moth to a light- the sense of adventure, daring to go closer to the open flame, putting life on the line and rationality on hold as he became blinded by it… whatever it was.
He hated, on several occasions, the way that Thorin disregarded Bilbo. Be it an idea, a comment, a complaint, or even the way in which he walked or set his bedroll out or sat at the fire and ate his food- Bilbo was always wrong, and Thorin was always right.
He hated the coldness- how disgusting it was suited to Thorin, whenever Bilbo thought back to those days where they were still tiptoeing around one another while clomping on each other’s toes with purpose.
Of course, that all changed overnight, on the carrock- with a very down-dressed Thorin trying to thank a clotheless Bilbo properly for saving his live, tripping on his own words as much as he was his own feet while pacing nervously as Bilbo showered under a waterfall, screeching through the stream at Thorin to ‘leave, or at least, wait until I’m dressed, you blundering oaf-’… and the rest, they say, is history.
[Whenever Bilbo said that he hated Thorin for almost rolling them over the sheer cliff of the eagles outpost in his enthusiasm, Thorin whispered ‘worth it’ and nipped the hobbit’s pointed ear. Bilbo stopped hating it soon enough.]
*
Where there was light, out in the wilderness, there were orcs.
But where there was light, there was also beauty.
And it was not always the kind of light that orcs were capable of seeing.
It depended on what kind of light one was speaking of.
There’s physical light: from the sun, from a lantern, from fire. It can mean many things- Bilbo’s favourite was the one which his hearth emitted, early in the night, with his feet up on an stool, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his lap. Naturally, he’d assumed Thorin’s would be the coals of a forge. So he was surprised to find that Thorin preferred a simple, small light; the yellow-tipped wick of a candle on the wall, letting someone know what they’re awaited. A light on the porch to lead home the owner.
Thorin. An example of the other kind of light: that of personality. And not just any personality. Like the candle is to a home-owner, the light of different people means more, feels like more, depend on who’s looking. Where one person can turn and walk without a second glance, another’s heart may be set alight by the perfection, the fittingness, that they see. Love hurts when it’s real- it ignites the soul and begs for satiating whenever paid attention. Thus it becomes a cycle, as the ache is impossible to completely ignore, and when presented with the opportunity of being drawn nearer, one finds it too difficult to refuse its call.
Moths to a light, if you will.
Bilbo lay awake, dwarves snoring up a storm all around him on the weathered peak of the carrock. He sunk back into the muscle-coiled arm wrapped around his waist, the body of heat pressed all the way along his back: behind his knees, on the backs of his calves, on every nub of his spine. Bathing in one another’s light, Bilbo slept peacefully in Thorin’s arms.
*
Coin after coin, goblet after goblet, cupboard after cupboard and armoury after armoury… and the Arkenstone went unfound by the weary company.
Correction: thirteen fourteenths of the company.
Bilbo sat on the battements, back settled to carved walls of the aged mountain. Beneath his robe was a weight which weighed the entire mountain itself down- a mere stone, no heavier than a small pebble and no bigger than his hand.
A mere stone that was central to the dwarven stronghold of Erebor, the heart of the Lonely Mountain. A rock. A polished piece of sediment. A measly, fruitless, uneventful and unhelpful rock.
Thorin passed. Twice, in fact, for Bilbo had hardly moved in the time it took for the sun to rise, pass, and start its descent. He hardly had a reason to- he didn’t need to be searching for the Arkenstone with the rest of the company. It could’ve been excused by his non-dwarven descent and therefor unnecessary compulsion to search for the blasted gem… but somehow, he didn't figure that that explanation was wholly truthful.
Simply put, Bilbo hated the tunnels and caverns of the kingdom under the mountain. He hated the mountain altogether. The entire area, truth be told, was rather bland and bleak and dissatisfying and… not home. Not homely. Not green and lifelike and liveable. Without warning, his mind went running, scampering back to his Shire. To his hole in the ground, and the township. The river, the fields, the trees, the houses. Markets. The tavern glowing softly, raucous singing blitzing through a crisp, otherwise calm dusk.
[Home is where the heart is, the heart of whomever you love, and the heart he’d yearned for and captured was corrupted at present.]
If the mountain’s heart was a blue-white gemstone… then logically, the Shire’s heart would be bursting with colour. Vivid with it, too bright.
But.
Over the course journey- over the course of Thorin -if Bilbo were to learn one very important thing, it wold be that the heart is not always reflected in the exterior. Physicality was meaningless without something to protect. It made sense that the mountain strewn of seemingly unbreakable armour bore guardianship to such an enchanting heart.
And Thorin?
Thorin was a mountain- a mountain with the most beautiful, most stunning, most endearing and ensnaring heart that Bilbo had ever had the privilege of viewing.
*
Thorin gave Bilbo his own indestructible armour; a delicate, shining, pure, strong vest. He wanted to tell Thorin that he liked it, that he knew what Thorin was doing, that the reflection of his heart was unnecessary because Thorin already had it…
Thorin didn't even know what he was doing.
Riches and gold filled every part of his motives, of his drive and want and need. And Bilbo knew, could see it there right in front of him: that last patch of rationalism closing, clouding over. He was being pushed out forcibly by a illness which he did not know how to cure.
Bilbo hated it.
Then, for the first time in what felt like years but was probably since they first stood in the mountain without a looming dragon trying to destroy them, Thorin smiled.
That smile. That smile was what he’d been following. The rawness in his joy, the roughness in which it had hewn itself, and the hope of a home. It was the thing, sometimes the only one thing he cold think of, that made it all worth fighting for. Replacing a scowl and a vacant, elsewhere expression with contentment. Gleefully bared teeth. Unabashed laughter. A glittering in the eyes like fireflies or fire embers floating in the rising heat of a campfire that said: we’re okay- we’re okay, we’re alive, and it will all be well.
All was not well.
All would never be well if this sickness grew; Thorin’s ailment would surely consume them all, given time, the press of war, the dismissal of reason and counsel.
All was not well- Thorin’s lips downturned, flattened, his shoulders hunched, and he led Bilbo away from the others in a way that he’d never done before.
[Usually, it’d be shy touches or mischievous smiles or light, heady giggles, and sometimes it was downright displays of affection- kissing and caressing and groping too-large hands on a too-small body -and the power that their love came with- lifting him as if he were a feather on the breeze and bypassing the beds they’d said they’d left to; blind with nothing but ‘you’ and ‘me’. ‘Your heart, and my heart’.]
A small distance away from the others, this fading person stood before Bilbo and looked straight through him. He didn’t liger his gaze on the curls around his ears, the scrunch of his nose, and certainly not the softness of his lips; something that had distracted Thorin often in the past. This person didn’t look at him… he looked through him. Whether it was to something greater or because he was unimportant, Bilbo didn’t know. But it hurt.
This was not Thorin Oakenshield.
“I was blind but now I begin to see…”
No, Bilbo tamped the urge to yell in the dwarf’s face, you are blinding yourself further with this… sickness! I have the Arkenstone, I have it, look, and I… I can’t believe you are mistrusting your own kin, above all else that’s happening, above me, because I was the one who ‘never should have come’ in the first place, was I not? I should be in the comforts of home, I don't belong with you in your perilous journey for a home but I came anyway because of you. I shouldn't even be here, I’ll go home right now and take this with me and you shall never see it again. And you’ll stop this… this madness! Just, stop it.
Of course, all Bilbo could do was remain rooted to the spot, listening, paralysed by the venom in his tone, the toxicity of betrayal in which he spoke.
“One of them is false.”
Preposterous, wrong, this was all terribly, terribly wrong. Wrongness that settled in the pit of Bilbo’s stomach and rotted, acidic and achingly; wrongness that pounded in his temples and heated the tips of his ears; wrongness that shifted the ground beneath his feet, and stung the back of his eyes, and twisted his lungs into a useless pair of wrung-out socks; stinking and warped and too sodden to dry.
“I will not part with a single piece of the treasure, not a single cent of it.”
Deep rumbling of the throat of the world, of rocks clashing in crevasses that reached to the core of the earth, of the halls of Erebor caving in, collapsing in and in and in and in until nothing was left. Until no sunlight could reach them.
Dragon.
You’re a dragon.
Dragon, dragon, dragon.
He retreated from Bilbo, slowly, menacingly, predatorily. Bilbo needed no more assurance that it was not a defeated withdrawal than the way in which this person, whoever he’d become, stood across from him.
His curling tail of shadows swept dangerously close. The dwarf drew himself to his full height, spikes clicking and shifting at Bilbo’s throat with razored points ready to pierce. His wings of the heightening power holding his heart in a vicelike grip, a stranglehold, unfurled in a wondrously frightening way. Even as their fellowship marched past, those unforgiving, veiled, clouded and false, false, false eyes didn’t flicker away one inch.
Torchlight shone off the battle armour, the scales of his hide, and the glowing embers in his eyes were cast of molten earth and the burning of desire.
This was a terrifying beast- and although Bilbo was not afraid, he wasn’t, of what his leader had become… he was sure that this foe would be far more difficult to overcome than the dragon Smaug ever was.
This friendly skin- not even thinking about what once lay beneath -gave it a perfect disguise. A figure that had once empathised and assisted- now destroying and basking in selfishness. Free to do so for the position, the ranking, the royalty. He wished it could be as easy as talking Thorin back into his own mind, but if that demonstration was anything to go by, it was all he could do to store away his words.
Bilbo hated a lot of things. He also wanted to tell Thorin a lot of things. That time was not then, and the outlook wasn’t favourable for a foreseeable heart to heart- not when one of said hearts was shrivelled and blackened, and not when the eve of war was upon them.
*
The time came and went.
A flash of the eyes told Bilbo that Thorin was fine, he was back, they were fine… but in all the action, neither of them had time to do little more. Time to do what they really wanted- talk. They couldn’t. Bilbo could relay what he’d been ordered- ordered himself because Gandalf was a caring fool -to relay and hope that the forewarning was enough to get them out with all parts intact and functioning.
[By this point, reassurance was as close as he’d get to an ‘I forgive you’ and an ‘I’m sorry’ and another maybe-final, maybe-not-final ‘I love you’.]
Everything after moved in staccato, halting and rushing like their jagged breaths as the need for air was forgotten; the paces of battle as easy as breathing.
Or, in Bilbo’s case, as easy as panicking.
Drums began.
The orcs dragged forth their prize- a lone dwarf prince.
Azog executed Fili on the cragged watchtower, dropping his armor-clad body down, cracking it upon impact to display a drained, stilled heart— the winds stopped blowing for a moment, almost sorrowfully.
Silence reigned.
Bilbo and Thorin stood side by side, watching helplessly across a frozen river.
Dwalin was somewhere in the background, hatred growing and blending with the pain of loss into a cocktail of refined, single-railed fury.
Kili screamed silently for his brother, sprung into vengeful attack- Thorin followed, Bilbo left in the whirlwinding emotions he was barely able to process before being advanced on by the endless swarm of their enemy.
He remembered little more than pelting rocks and watching Dwalin knock orc by orc to the floor and thinking nothing but ‘Thorin, Thorin, Thorin’, and how he never wanted to see that armour open up to a listless and empty heart.
*
If the falling of Fili was a rusted, serrated blade to the chest, then the scene before Bilbo was a red hot mace dragged clean down the middle, in slow motion, with spikes and barbs and tipped with poison.
[Once, a great number of months ago, Bilbo would’ve feared for his life stepping foot onto a frozen-over river. He probably wouldn’t even be outside in such weather, let alone sprint along the glacial stretch that ended in an unforgiving drop.]
Thorin’s voice was slow, thick, laced with pain and fatigue. Mostly, it was peaceful. Peaceful. Finally.
[Bilbo hated it- he hated that it came to this for peace to finally come. He hated that, out of all the things Thorin could have said, he apologised.]
“I am sorry that I made you a part of my perils-”
“No!” Never apologise for any of it, not one second. Not now, not in a minute, not in a few days when you’re rested and healing, not ever. “I am glad to have shared in your perils… that is more than any Baggins deserves.” It’s far more than I deserved. I wasn’t deserving of your gaze, what it promised- the adventure, the journey, the danger, the company. You. I shouldn’t be the one walking away, walking home, when you’ve fought so desperately and unwaveringly to reclaim yours. Because you will. You just need to stay, to just… see me, and not close your eyes, and… not be dead.
Those eyes flickered, that smile made an appearance. Bilbo couldn’t handle much more of it. Here was Thorin, slipping away, and he was powerless. Where is Gandalf? Where is help?! Why can’t I stop this, why can’t I save him?
Thorin’s exhales went short, clipped, and his inhales shaky. Uncertainly hinted around the crinkling skin at the corners of his eyes- as if he was unsure what to say. As if anything he could say right now wouldn’t be the right thing.
“Farewell, Master Burglar. Go back to your books, your fireplace. Plant your trees, watch them grow.” With you, I want to watch it grow with you. You forgot to put yourself there, because you will be, you wont be gone. There’s an ‘I’ after the ‘you’, Thorin. There always will be. “If more of us valued home above gold, it would be a merrier world.”
Home.
Home is where the heart is, home is a candle on the windowsill that’s waiting for someone to come home to. Home is waking up safe in the morning, and falling asleep unburdened at night. Home is light and laughter and love. Home is you, Thorin. How can I find it when I can see it crumbling? How can I fight for a home when there isn’t one to fight for? How can I… Tell me what to do, Thorin, please. Where is my home, now?
“The eagles are here…” Just like the last time your armour broke and death tried to rope your heart away from me, “The e-”
Bilbo choked on a sob, the one that had been worming its way up and up since the moment he caught sight of Thorin- alive and moving and peaceful-looking in the sun; its rays cast across the battlefield in a victorious light.
Then, the dwarven king crumpled at the knees and fell aside to the bronze glow- fallen to victory far more willingly than he had fallen to defeat.
[Because Thorin was presumptuous, and he’d presumed that he’d reclaim the Mountain- his home. He was allowed to have both, for a short time.]
The light will fade from the sky. The snow will blanket the fallen men and elves and dwarves- the world will keep on, and it will not stop for dead kings, dead brothers, dead friends, or dead lovers.
Bilbo held his sigh of congratulations over the duration of their journey [on foot, on horseback, on eagle-back, inside and on top of barrels, in the hands of their captors, guided by friends, chased by wargs and orcs and goblins and spiders and a dragon], saved it for their success… not this distraught whimper for the second in which Thorin’s heart stopped. A relieving sound he’d stored since he’d first seen the dwarf with his guard down- singing about their grandiose home in Bilbo’s own cozy, underground domain. And now, burying his face in braided, bristled hair, all that came out was a long, animalistic whine of a shattered heart.
He never wanted to watch the light of Thorin Oakenshield slip between his fingers, let the cheer and brightness lying beneath the rocky surface be clouded and patched away by sadness and loss and pain and death.
But that was what had happened.
[Bilbo hated a lot of things. But he hated nothing more than being disrupted, uprooted, and removed from his home.]