Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is winter, and it is cold, and it hurts to breathe.

Bilbo has seen more bodies in the last few hours, more dead spread about him, than he has seen in all of his years on this earth.

His head is ringing from a rock he took to the temple, there is a gash in one leg that he hasn’t been able to feel in hours, and that is starting to worry him. There is an unpleasant taste somewhere between copper and dirt in the back of his mouth that he just can’t get rid of, no matter how much of the murky water from the skin one man handed to him he drinks. His fingers are starting to turn blue and his vision isn’t as clear as it was even an hour ago, but if there is one thing that he knows right now, it is that he can’t stop.

He has to get back.

Back to the place where-

Where-

The place where he saw Thorin fall.

He can’t be dead he can’t be dead he can’t be dead he can’t be dead he just can’t be

He hasn’t spoken to Thorin since the nightmare at the gate, since the moment that he had revealed that he’d given away the King’s stone, since he had been labelled traitor and cast out from the Mountain, from the Company, from his family. And he’s still at little angry about that, there is still some resentment lingering, but right now he doesn’t care, because he saw that blade go into Thorin’s chest, he saw that crown fall from his brow, right before a sudden hit stole Bilbo's own consciousness away. Right now he doesn’t care that Thorin was wrong: right now all he cares is that the idiot King is alive, alive and well, because he has a Mountain to run, damn it, he has people to organise and a city to rebuild and, and, and-

He’s not sure if it is sweat or tears making his cheeks damp, or even blood from some unnoticed scrape somewhere.

But then all thoughts disappear from his mind as he clambers over another body, because he can see him.

Thorin is lying there.

He hasn’t got up.

There are other bodies, strewn around, and really there isn’t all that much that makes him stand out – his armour had been the finest on the battlefield when he had set out, Bilbo was sure, but hours of battle had left it covered in the mire of the field. No doubt it could be polished back to a high shine with enough effort, but for now it looked no more special than the armour of any other. His crown was on the ground around him somewhere, his great sword cast aside, all the symbols of his kingship reduced to nothing.

But Bilbo would have recognised him anywhere.

He stumbled towards him, and fell to the ground.

Thorin’s hair had been braided back at his temples, and already they were covered in grime; there was a cut across his cheek and his eyes were closed, circled with shadows, but even now he looked a beautiful as he ever had to Bilbo, as if some great Creator had carved him from stone, each plane of his face a masterpiece, the curve of his mouth gentler now than Bilbo could recall seeing.

Bilbo took his arm, but he couldn’t feel his skin through the leather of his shirt, the cold metal of his vambraces.

“We’ve found the lads,” came Dwalin’s voice, hoarse with exhaustion, and Bilbo started, looking up at the great warrior. “They fell defending their Uncle’s body, but the healers think they’ll live.”

Bilbo nodded, looking back at Thorin’s face.

Beside him, Balin fell to the ground, his hands running through his hair in despair.

“I didn't really believe...” the old dwarf mumbled, his voice filled with more grief that Bilbo could ever remember hearing. “I didn't...”

Thorin’s chest did not rise and fall; his lips were starting to turn blue.

Behind him came the quiet sound of weeping; Dwalin did not kneel beside them both, and as Bilbo glanced up once more, he saw that the dwarf’s hands had left their vigil on his weapons, and were covering his face, hiding his grief from sight.

“He’s gone,” Bilbo found himself saying, but he could not bring himself to cry. “He’s really gone.”

Balin’s hair was a mess, his eyes were red, and his voice was broken.

“The King is dead,” he said, and Bilbo did not know who he was speaking to. “The King is dead, long live the-”

But he cut himself off before he could end, too much hurt in his chest to finish.

“I didn’t think he’d really be gone,” Bilbo said, quietly, as Dwalin pulled his brother to his feet. “I saw him fall, but I didn’t think it would be enough to…”

He trailed off, his fingertips stroking the edge of Thorin’s jaw. He wished that he could feel his hands, feel his chest, where once his heart had beat with more strength than any Bilbo had known, but Thorin had been dressed for battle, and there was no way past the armour and the leather.

Balin and Dwalin were leaning on each other, walking slowly away, when they seemed to remember him, turning back and calling.

“Bilbo,” they said, but he could barely hear their words. “Bilbo, come back to the tents, come back with us.”

But the Hobbit just shook his head, his eyes not leaving Thorin’s face.

“Later,” he replied, quietly. “Just a little later. I’ll- I just need to…”

They nod, he thinks, though he can barely see them out of the periphery of his vision now: they understand well enough the agony of loss. They have seen many battles before, have watched their Kingdom burn, but this is Bilbo’s first. He needs time, they seem to think, because they leave without saying any more to him.

Things become quiet, then. There is only the distant screech of eagles, far above him, and the occasional moan of someone still left injured on the field. There was an uncomfortable feeling in his chest, one he could not quite place: it was like watching Thorin on the Carrock, he thinks to himself, but there is no Gandalf hovering over him, old hands full of arcane wisdom and a voice full of magic, no hope now for the King Under the Mountain.

It was a very different ache to the one that often plagued him, when he watched Thorin.

His face was lit by the fire in Bilbo’s own home when he had first felt that twist of something strange and unknown; Thorin had been singing a low and mournful song, the tale of the Mountain and all that they had lost.

It was bright with moonlight the next time, as Balin told him about the last great battle of the Dwarves. He was someone that Balin could follow, the old dwarf says, and Bilbo can only agree: he’s already been pulled out of his comfortable little life by the promise of adventure and the way Thorin’s voice had caressed the name of his Kingdom when he had looked on that map at the dining table Bilbo's father had carved for his mother.

He doesn’t remember the next time, after that. It happened too often for him to pin each and every one down. All he knows is that there had once been a King who had pulled him from his dull little life and thrown him into a world that he had never known: there had once been a dwarf who had warmed a part of him that he had not realised was even cold, and now he was dead.

He might have been sat there for minutes, or it could have been for days, he isn’t really sure. All he knows is that by the time a noise nearby makes him look up his legs have gone numb, and night has begun to fall – or, at least, the sky is darker than it was before, greyer somehow.

And there is a figure, standing nearby, bent almost double under the weight of some burden that Bilbo could not quite make out, covered in a long veil that fell about its feet.

There was something... indistinct about it, and it moved without sound as it shifted its load across his shoulder. 

“Who are you?” Bilbo asked, but his voice was barely above a whisper, and the creature didn’t answer. It seemed to turn towards Bilbo though, and there was something about the way that it tilted its head that suggested it was thinking, perhaps a little quizzical, as if wondering quite what this strange creature speaking to it was.

“What are you carrying?” he tried again, but the creature was already turning away.

There was something cool and sure in his chest, some impossible understanding that this was a creature beyond mortal knowledge, something that he would never quite be able to understand properly.

“Can I follow you?” he asks, and his hands clench to fists at his side. “Can I find him again?”

The shade said nothing, but it did pause for a moment, before continuing on its way.

He pressed one kiss to Thorin’s mouth, perhaps the only kiss that they would ever share, and rose to follow.

He didn’t look back.

The world was grey around him: soon enough the brown of the mud beneath his feet began to pale, the colours bleeding out of the landscape around him until he could see little in the distance but indistinct fingers of a sudden mist; he could not recall when it had first appeared, nor even when he had first noticed it, but it grew only thicker as he continued to follow the figure in front of him, still bent low by its heavy burden.

There were glints of swords and dented armour, tarnished by filth but still reflecting the light in some places still around his feet, and though he picked over them carefully they began to feel somehow further away, and the reflected light seemed dimmer than ever before. The shade simply walked on, sometimes seeming to be far ahead of Bilbo, and other times so close that he might have been able to reach out, and touch it.

He never quite saw its face, though sometimes it turned to look at him with what he thought might have been an appraising eye, as if unconvinced that Bilbo would be able to follow it far enough to meet the journeys end – though where that end might be, he could not say.

The sounds of dying creatures, both friend and foe, soon became the merest whisper on the breeze, and the stench of blood and gore turned instead to the cool scent of mist, smelling of nothing but still definable, as if absence itself were a tangible thing, with properties of its own. The air was colder now, though not quite as unpleasant as he had thought that it would be, and on he walked.

Soon they were among trees, but Mirkwood was too far away and he had not walked for long enough to reach it; there were no trees left around the Mountain after the desolation of the dragon.

He was far from home, and now it seemed he was even further still: there was no sound from man nor elf nor dwarf, not even the cry or org or warg or eagle, no soothing murmur from bear or wizard. Where they had all gone he did not know, but he rather suspected that it was not them who had vanished, but him – gone beyond this place to somewhere inherently other.

Yet still, he could not bring himself to be afraid.

Because somewhere further through this strange place, he was sure that he might find what he was looking for.

And then almost as soon as he had come to the trees they were on a hill, the forest a blanket around them, and though the hill was low there was nothing taller than it in any direction that Bilbo could see: just the strange grey haze of the sky and a peculiar copper light filtering through. The hill was just dirt beneath his feet, and for a moment he longed for the soft grass of home, a jewel-bright green in the summer sunshine.

And on the hill was a tree, standing alone.

Bilbo had seen many trees, in his life.

This was not like any of them.

It was not like the spreading silver birches that grew in pretty groves around the Shire, nor the spreading poplars or twisting buddleia, always bright with the flicker of butterflies about their purple flowers in the spring. Neither was it the deep oaks and hawthorns of the Old Forest, shadowed and full of some quiet expectation, as if at any moment they might move, as soon as you looked away. It wasn’t like the tall, elegant trees of Rivendell, nor the stunted things clinging to the sides of the Misty Mountains, or even the dark and looming forest of Mirkwood.

The tree was of no kind that Bilbo could quite identify – every time he looked up at the leaves they seemed to change shape, and the bark shifted in colour too, sometimes even peeling back from the trunk to reveal the silver-brown raw wood beneath, only for the wound to disappear when Bilbo looked back. It wasn’t particularly tall, but as he drew level with it, alone on the hilltop, and looked up through the branches, he thought that it might go on forever.

There was fruit on the tree, a kind he had never seen before.

Just in front of him, the shade stopped, and suddenly Bilbo realised that it was standing straighter than before, the veil draping elegantly to the ground in front of him, as if its weight was no longer such a burden.

It seemed to watch him, for the longest moment.

Bilbo looked up at the tree again.

“I have to eat one, don’t I?” he asked, and his voice was oddly hollow. “I can’t go any further if I don’t, can I?”

The shade did not reply to him; Bilbo was not sure if it even could.

He wasn’t sure how he had known that that was what he had to do, but already he found himself reaching up into the lowest of the branches, shuddering against the strangely smooth quality of the bark against his skin; the cuff of his shirt, stained with blood and filth, slipped back from his wrist as he reached, and just as he took hold of one of those peculiar fruits he started in sudden pain.

He withdrew his hand quickly, and brought his wrist up.

Some unseen thorn had scratched at the skin there, drawing a thin line across his skin. A small price, he supposed. He pressed it gently to his lips as a small bead of blood blossomed on one end, the taste sudden against his tongue.

The fruit was strange to look at, he realised now, an odd grey-green with a thick and curiously mottled skin, though it felt firm enough to the touch. He brought it close to his mouth, but he couldn’t smell anything, no sharp or sweet smell, or even the foetid stench of rot.

There was a strange oily texture to the skin, and his fingers rubbed across it gently.

He could always turn back, he supposed. The shade was already turning away, disinterested in him now that Bilbo had begun to hesitate: he supposed that no one would ever know if he came back without finding what he was looking for.

Would they even know that he had come here?

Was this even real?

He squeezed the fruit a little harder; perhaps it was him, not Thorin, who had fallen in the battle after all, and this was just his own passage to whatever eternal harvest Hobbits went to when they passed beneath the earth again.

But then he remembered the still feeling of Thorin’s skin under his fingertips, the cool taste of it against Bilbo’s mouth as he had kissed him.

Something that painful could only have been real.

The skin of the fruit was tough, its flesh dry in his mouth.

It tasted like ash.

There had been ash in the air that night on the Carrock, when they had been surrounded and the trees were alight with fire, like burning torches to call some far-off traveller home again, only the home in question was death, and Bilbo didn’t feel like he had been gone long enough for this to end quite yet. So he had pulled himself from the bough and he had run when he had seen Thorin fall, because in that moment there had been no choice for Bilbo, nothing in the world that could have stopped him from running towards the fallen figure of a dwarf that he would – and has – follow across Middle Earth.

And then there had been weightlessness and the cool night air, feathers under his fingers, but that taste of ash had lingered still, drifting in and out of sleep until the sun had begun to crest the horizon and those great eagles had left them, and Thorin had been standing, his deep voice booming, then pulling Bilbo into his arms.

The taste of ash had been there still, but suddenly something so much more, the crackling embers of a fire all ready to be ignited, if only someone were to feed it.

Bilbo hadn’t realised that he’d closed his eyes, but now all of a sudden they were open again, and the shade and its burden had gone, and in the distance, standing tall, emerging from the mists and the forests was a mountain that he could have sworn had not been there before. It was a greater mountain, greater even than Erebor, and the world around it was grey and green and strange, still and oddly quiet.

Some feeling pulled at his chest, tugging him back down the hill, in the direction of that mountain.

He did not know if what he would find at the end, but now that he was here, he knew that there would be no turning back.

Bilbo walked down the hill and through the strange landscape, through twisting pines that seemed to grow taller than any tree every should have done, reaching to the sky with dry limbs that should have died years ago; there was a mist around his ankles, cool and damp, that seemed to hide the ground from his view, so that often he stumbled on loose rocks, or roots from those great trees overhead that had broken through the dry, unpleasant feeling earth.

And through those trees he thought sometimes to see figures, striding back and forth or just drifting aimlessly, but none of them ever seemed to come close to him; it seemed as if they could not even see him for the longest time, and it was only when as he reached the gentle slope of the foothills of the mountain that occasionally one would turn to look at him, their faces blank and unreadable, as if wondering what he was doing there.

What was he doing there?

But when that thought began to plague him, he thought instead of Thorin’s skin, pale and smeared in blood and dirt; he thought of the flutter of his own pulse giving him a moment of hope as he searched for Thorin's; he thought of those eyes closed, and never opening again.

Sweat began to bead on his forehead as the hills grew steeper and the path more twisting; soon he came upon a dried out riverbed, full of sharp debris, broken tree limbs and fallen stones that cut the soles of his feet, leaving smears of blood on the rock behind him; he turned once, and saw the souls flocking closer around those, bright red in the grey landscape.

After that, he did not turn around again.

The forest wasn’t the same as Mirkwood. It was wide and grey and open, but the disconcerting feeling was similar enough that Bilbo couldn’t help but think of it.

Wide, staring eyes between the dark trees of Mirkwood, pressing close together in the oppressive dark; cobwebs clinging to their clothes and unhealthy leaves beneath his bare feet, claustrophobic and discomforting. Walking closer and closer to each other as the days passed and they became more and more quiet: one day he saw that Fili and Kili were hand in hand, a strangely childlike fear in the tight line of their mouths, and another night he saw that Dwalin had rolled in his sleep to press his front against Nori’s back, as if desperate for some, for any form of comfort.

And then another night, with no stars above them, no moon to shine its pale light relief, and it had just been Thorin and Bilbo still awake, on watch together, sitting silently next to each other, close enough that their arms were touching, just that small point of warm enough to reassure the other that they were still there in the thick, heavy darkness.

And Bilbo had felt it, that night as Thorin began to hum a low and quiet song, the ache that he had never believed he would feel, the ache of belonging and loving and hoping, an ache that spoke of dreams and the future and a thousand possibilities, and though he did not recognise Thorin's tune he felt that he might know it regardless, in some deep and untouched part of himself, that had only been waiting for this night to come.

Thorin had been a song that he hadn't known once, too, and now he was afraid that it would never leave his mind.

"Thorin?” he had asked, to the darkness.

“I’m here,” came the low reply, and something that had only been embers in Bilbo's heart before lit, quite suddenly, into something brighter.

But there was no strange and unexpected comfort to be found in this landscape, and so he simply walked further, as the riverbed grew narrower and more twisting, leading him up the mountainside.

The trees thinned out around him, but though he climbed higher, there was no view to be seen, only the endless grey haze around him. The air here was cool and fresh, but there was no sound of birds, no whispering breeze to keep him company, and eventually it lead him to the yawning mouth of a cave, wide and deep, cut into strange shapes and forms. They were not natural, great angular patterns and winding columns, but neither could they have been carved by any mortal hand.

No, Bilbo knew with some clarity that he could not explain that these shapes had been cut into the rock by some force stronger than that, by some creature far beyond his understanding.

And there, propped up on a rock by the entrance to the cave, was his mother.

His heart ached.

He remembered quite suddenly the winter after she had died, when he had been all alone for the first time in his house, trying to adjust to the quiet creak of the floorboards at night as they had settled, trying to get used to empty rooms and the cool drafts coming down from the chimney without a loving hand to pass him a cover, to insist on him putting on a warmer jumper. The hurt was as painful as it had been back then as he looked upon her face, as fair and warm as it had ever been, yet there was a strange stillness about her even as she propped her feet up on the rock and took a long puff on her pipe, the smoke wreathing about her face in peculiar shapes, here a prancing warg, there a dancing bird.

“I’ve missed you, sweet child,” she said, and her voice was every song sang on a summer evening, every childhood dream imagined in the warmth of a soft bed; it was a clear sunrise and guessing the names of the stars at night, lying out on top of his family smial as a tween; it was the flicker of the homefire and the smell of baking bread, the taste of blackberry stains on his fingertips long after he had returned home again, the haze from the harvest scythes on an autumn afternoon, the gentle caress of fragranced bathwater as a faunt as his mother washed his hair with herby soap in the evening, tired and aching from a day playing in the forest. Her voice was her stories, and her love, the joy in her voice when she called for him, every time as if she were speaking his name for that very first time, and for a moment all he wanted to do was curl up at her side, and rest his head in her lap, and weep for all that he had seen and lost since he had run out of his home all those months before, so full of hopes for wholesome adventure that would come only to cold death and tired eyes, the singing of blades against blades, the screams of the dying around him.

“Don’t go in,” she said to him, “Stay here with me.”

Bilbo took half a step forward.

“But I need to go inside,” he said, though already his voice was fainter, less convinced. “I need to save Thorin.”

“Why?” his mother asked him, “Why do you need to, my love? There is no joy in a cold mountain, no love to be found in the east. You belong with your family, in the Shire, with the sun on your face and flowers about your feet.”

He paused, then, and she sat up a little straighter, and it was only now that he realised that there was some strange shapelessness to her, some queer and undefinable blur to the edge of her skin, as if she were only keeping herself together by force of will.

“But this isn’t the Shire,” he told her, his voice a little hoarse. “And my mother is dead.”

The smoke from her pipe was growing thinner, the glow in the bowl beginning to fade.

“And you are but a shadow and a dream of what she was,” he continued, his voice stronger now than it was before. “She had more iron in her spine than I will ever have, and she would never have tried to stop me from doing what I needed to do.”

The shade that wasn’t quite his mother flickered then, and he found the will to stride past her, despite the ache twisting in his chest, and entered the cave.

The light seemed to dim far too quickly as he walked into the cavern, as if quite suddenly swallowed up by the stone around him, and it grew warmer than it had been outside, though he was only walking deeper into the Mountain. And as he walked through the cave the shadows grew more formless, deeper and less clear than they had been before, and now and then Bilbo was sure that he could hear whispers on the still air, though they were wordless and no shade came from the dark tunnels that branched to every side of him, either to deter him or to guide him on his way; it was a labyrinth in there, and down each tunnel he was sure he would have found countless souls, yet some pain tugging at his chest seemed to lead him down the twisting ways, and though he did not know where that pain was leading him, he was sure that it was right.

The cave roof above him grew gradually taller, the tunnels slowly wider, grooves worn into the stone by endless years of travellers moving from one world to the next, and soon he came across a cavern proper, deep down there in the dark, lit by some golden-grey light from a source that he could not fathom.

And in that cavern was a figure, distinct for all that it seemed to move with as much rolling grace as the shadows that shifted in the corner of his vision; at one moment it was a man, and yet another a woman, the next neither and then both, something so far beyond what Bilbo knew and understood that it almost hurt to look upon its face; he averted his eyes to the golden light playing with the shadows against the walls as if they were living things, until the figure spoke.

“Look at me,” it said, and its voice was the rolling thunder breaking over the sky and the whisper of wings as a bird took flight, the kiss of the air against a cheek on a hot summer day, the ringing of metal in the depths of a forge.

And so Bilbo did.

And the figure was as tall as the mountain and yet still stood in the cave with ease, and its arms were caked in ash, so thick that they might have been made of coal, for they glowed in places like embers, as if they themselves were a forge, a tool of creation so distinct that they had become more than flesh and bone, though he suspected that a being like this had never been anything as fragile as flesh and bone to begin with.

No, Bilbo thought, in the depths of this mountain cave, as the awe of the sight prickled the skin at the back of his neck and caught in his lungs with the chill of fear; no, this creature was forged by starlight and by desire, created by something far beyond Bilbo’s understanding, far beyond any mortal ken, and though he was still afraid to look at it his gaze remained firm, and the creature looked back, its eyes more fire than colour, aching with the depths of timeless knowledge, aching with life and all the sorrow of a creator forced to watch his creationa burn.

And then it laughed at him.

“You are a little thing,” it said, and Bilbo did not dare to even think of its name, though he’d heard it before, by one name in elven tales and another around the campfire with the dwarves. “Why have you come here?”

The air hurt as Bilbo took a deep breath, prickling him inside with a wordless fear.

But still, he held his resolve.

“To bring him back,” he replied, and he held his back straight and stared with as much firmness as he could manage back at the figure.

The figure shook his head, seeming to lose interest, and from his hands began to stream a river of liquid light, falling into the earth around his feet and disappearing even as if began to crystallise into what might have been diamond.

“But what is dead is gone, little thing,” it replied, and there was a weariness to its tone now, some deep exhaustion, and Bilbo wondered how many souls this figure had watched pass from one ghost of a world to another, how many creations he had kissed the breath of life into only to then have to watch them fade away.

“It has only been a moment,” Bilbo answered, “Only a little time, since he died.”

I couldn't even hold his hand as he breathed his last; he died alone, and he took a part of me with it, and I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.

“Has it?” the figure answered, and Bilbo paused.

How long had it been since he had risen from Thorin’s side?

How long had it been since he had eaten that tasteless fruit?

“Time has no meaning here,” Bilbo thought, quite aloud by accident, and then he blinked; he knew a riddle when he heard one.

The figure raised his eyes back to Bilbo as the stream from his hands turned to gold; Bilbo could feel the heat of it from where he stood, but he did not back away.

“Why should I give one of my own back to you?” the figure asked, and Bilbo bit his lip.

“Because it was not his time to die,” he replied, and the fire of the figure’s eyes seemed to glow brighter.

“All things must die eventually,” it replied.

“Except for you.”

Perhaps that was a shade of a smile on its face, then, or perhaps it was something more bitter.

“Aye,” it answered, “Except for me.”

The steady flow of liquid gold made the glow about the shadow of its person even brighter, and then it began to thin as the figure seemed to think for a moment.

“He has a place in my Halls, a place already carved for him,” it answered in the end, just as the gold began to stop.

“It can wait.”

Bilbo’s voice sounded a little thin in the echoing cave, a little reedy, and sore with desperation. “Please,” he tried again, knowing that he sounded even worse than he had before. “Please, he didn’t deserve to die, he was a stupid, stubborn idiot but I know he had a good heart, and it shouldn’t have ended like this.”

The form seemed to grow then, seemed to rise higher in the cave though it never touched the walls, and its voice was the sound of hammers in the deep, the slow movement of mountains, the echoing sound of the growth of the world, the sound of shifting plates and crumbling stone, the sound that the earth would one day make when it collapsed into nothing, full of rage and despair.

“Why should I wait, little thing? Why do you come here and demand that I change the way that things should be? Why should the world change its course, why should the tide of life and death alter just for you?”

Why?

Because...

Of the way his eyes look in the firelight, shadowed and strange but bright with the embers of his passion.

The only metal I have ever felt my heart long for is the silver threaded through his hair.

Of the way his hands hold his blade without any concern, but he can also twist the most intricate braids into Fili’s hair.

His voice is deep, and shakes me to my bones, but it can be gentle, too, and that hurts me even more.

Because there is anger and resentment that drives him, but if you look deeper than that, he’s looking for a home, and that’s all I’ve ever been searching for, too.

And at that Bilbo’s shoulders sagged, and his breath left his body in one long exhale, for he had no answer bar the most simple, no way to convince this Lord further than with the one truth that had altered his entire world, and though perhaps it was inconsequential to everything other than him, it still felt too grand and powerful a thing to him not to voice it..

“Because I love him.”

Then the figure sighed, too, and shook its great head, as if heartsore and weary.

“But does he love you?”

Bilbo shrugged; it was not a thought that had concerned him up to now, and he saw no reason for it to begin to do so at this moment.

“I don’t know.”

Then, to his surprise, the figure laughed, a deep and booming noise, and it brought its hands up to fists at its side, and all of a sudden the embers of those coal limbs burst into flickering flame, throwing such a bright light against the cave that Bilbo could now see that those shadows had not been hiding bare rock, as he had first thought, but in fact a myriad of handprints, pressed into the stone in countless numbers, overlapping and crossing over each other time and time again, more than he could even fathom.

“You come here with so much faith, little one. What if you bring him back, and then he does not love you in turn?”

“Then I’ll go home,” Bilbo answered him, and though the thought stung a little it was with the acknowledged pain of truth, and it did not hurt too much. “Back to my little hole under the hill. And I’ll live out the rest of my days quietly, content enough in the knowledge that far away he lives still. And my heart will always be his, and I will always miss him, but as long as I know he continues to live in his mountain halls then that will be enough for me.”

And Bilbo smiled then, a strange little smile as much full of love as it was full of loss, and continued on, the figure’s fire-eyes staring at him as if they were looking into his very soul. “But if he doesn’t, I know that there will be an ache in my chest for the rest of my days, and a loss I cannot form into words.”

Everything that is bright and good about the world will be gone with him, he didn’t say, but from the flickering in the flames of those eyes he thought that the figure heard him still. Everything that ever gave me joy and peace would be nothing but grey shadow in the face of my grief.

“Have you ever seen Erebor?” he said instead, and the figure seemed to nod, the flames that wreathed its arms growing slowly smaller.

“I have seen the form of everything that my creations have carved from stone or metal,” it answered, a weariness in its voice still. “Everything they craft and hold dear to their hearts passes through my knowledge here.”

Bilbo bit his lip.

“Then you have seen how beautiful it was,” he replied. “And you have seen how beautiful it will be again.”

And finally the figure looked away, at the myriad of handprints on the walls, the touch of every one of his creations that had passed from one life to the next, that had been remade here, in his hall of souls.

“Erebor needs him,” Bilbo continued, “and his family need him. His people need him. I need him.”

The great creature seemed to sigh, once more, and turned its back to Bilbo.

“Alright, little one.”

All his breath seemed to leave his body in one swoop; relief coursed through his veins in some great warmth, but he seemed unable to say anything but the most simple of words, the most basic way of expressing a gratitude that shook him to his bones.

“Thank you.”

But the creature did not seem convinced.

“Do not give me your thanks; you might not yet wish to give them to me.”

His back still to Bilbo, he went back about his work, and from the darkness of the cave came a great light.

“Turn around, little one, and walk back the way you came. His shade will follow you, as long as you do not look back; no matter how much you might want to, do not turn to look at him. If you do, he will return to my Halls, and you will not be able to save him.”

Bilbo hesitated, for just a moment, and the light grew brighter, so much that it almost hurt.

“Go from my sight, little one,” came that deep and aching voice, and Bilbo nodded.

“Thank you,” he said again, and turned away.

“Keep your eyes on the sky, and your face forward,” came the last words, and Bilbo did not reply: he just began to walk back the way he came, down deep and twisting tunnels, back towards the light.

The shade of his mother had gone by the time he came back out again, and there was no sound from behind him, but he did not hesitate on the rock; ash had begun to fall from the sky, so soft and fine that it might have been snow but for the blur of grey that it left across his skin when he wiped at it.

The ground of the river bed seemed damper than before under his feet, as if there had been some rainfall since he had been inside, or else some underground water source had sprung up again. The air was still, and the ashes that were coming from the impenetrable sky seemed more to drift than to fall, sticking to his eyelashes.

Almost like snow, he thought to himself. Almost, but not quite.

There was a sick fear curling through his chest, tightening to an uncomfortable degree. There might be something behind him, and of course there was no reason for him to believe that there was not, but the problem was that he did not know – how would he know?

But on he walked.

The bloodstains from his feet had gone from the rocks, as had the shades that had gathered around them. He wasn’t sure if that was reassuring, or distressing.

A stick snapped, close.

Had that been him, or someone behind him?

Further thoughts on the matter were utterly lost to the sight of movement just ahead; he walked a little further down the river, keeping one eye on the rocks that he had caught a glimpse of it by.

“Hello?” he called, and he would have been lying if he had said that he was also hoping, just a little, that it might be Thorin who replied.

Instead, a raven hopped out from behind one rock, and stretched its wings for a moment, ruffling its feathers.

“Oh,” Bilbo said, a little disappointed. “What on earth are you doing here?”

The raven cocked his head at Bilbo, but as he took a few steps closer he realised that despite the fact that it looked as if the bird was following his movements, the raven didn’t have any eyes. It might have been a little less disconcerting had they been lost, or blinded, but there were no empty sockets or patches of scar tissue on its face: instead, the feathers that crowned its skull simply continued uninterrupted, a sheen of blue-black down to the brightness of its beak.

For a moment Bilbo was certain that it would reply to him, for it looked so much like the great ravens of Erebor, with their booming, croaking voices, but it did not: it just continued to look (or, Bilbo supposed, as best that it could) for a while, until Bilbo was nearly level with it, at which point it hopped down from its rock to his feet.

“Well, hullo there, what- oh, stop that, would you!”

The bird had begun to peck at his ankles, sharp enough to draw blood in places, and to flutter up just enough to tug at the hem of his coat, and Bilbo tried to swat at him, half-turning to reach as it continued to flutter away from his hand, and-

He stopped himself almost immediately, spinning back around to face forwards.

“None of that!” he chastised, sounded almost like his old self again to his ears, as if he were scolding some faunt for trying to steal a scone from his cooling rack. “I know your game, and I am not turning around!”

He wondered if he sounded as much like his grandmother as he thought he did, and in a way that gave him strength. What was a raven without eyes compared to the gossip of the Shire? Absolutely nothing. And by Eru, if he could grow tomatoes as good as the Gaffer’s, then he could do this.

Who knew that the simple nature of a Hobbit could withstand quite so much? he thought to himself, certainly not I, when I first set out on this mad little quest.

The raven continued to peck at him, and he scowled down at it, before picking up his pace through the riverbed, padding over the debris beneath his feet and feeling oddly better.

“You, good sir, clearly know nothing of the irritation of my relatives and neighbours if you think that this is going to bother me unduly,” he said to the raven, who pecked his fingers, rather painfully. Bilbo swatted at it, again, but it was a little half-heartedly.

“The best folk that ever came from the earth, of course,” he added, after a long moment. “But also some of the most annoying. You’ve obviously never had a conversation with Lobelia Sackville-Baggins about the silverware if you think this will cause me too much concern.”

He rather thought that the raven was as baffled by him as the dwarves had been, all those months ago, but he couldn’t be quite sure.

“Not that I would wish that on you, you must understand,” he continued, his voice growing a little stronger in the strange, grey light. “She’s family, of course, but I have never met a woman more passive aggressive about teaspoons in my life.”

The raven seemed to sigh at him, and Bilbo tried very hard not to smile. If this was supposed to be some test along the road, then he rather thought he was doing a good job of winning. Apparently there was no force on earth that could stand up to good, Hobbit-y chatter.

“Don’t ask me why I would assume that you would have had the pleasure of my relatives, old thing,” he said next, as the raven continued to pull at his robes with some renewed vigour. “I’m afraid that I am not quite in the right frame of mind for this sort of thing right now. Though my dear old aunt Mirabella would be quite offended if she could hear me say that. She used to tell me that there was never a good enough excuse for poor conversation, although she did also tend to trail off if someone set a plate of lemon cakes in front of her.”

The raven seemed to slow a little, as if growing tired of Bilbo’s conversation, and he couldn’t really blame the poor thing. “Nice woman,” he said next, clasping his hands behind his back. “Blind as a bat and a huge hypocrite to boot, but I suppose we can’t always pick our relatives.”

He turned to smile down at the raven, he rather fancied glanced back at him, though he couldn’t be quite sure. “You must think me quite starved for good company, of course, listening to me witter on about my family when you’re trying to annoy me.”

Bilbo frowned, then, as the raven gave his ankle one less, half-hearted peck. “That isn’t quite the case, though,” he said, his voice quieter not. “I’ve actually had some of the best company I’ve ever known, recently.”

Without a doubt, really.

“More like family than my actual family, in their own, odd way. I am quite fond of the lot of them. I’ll be quite heart sore, to leave them.”

The raven hesitated, still hopping along beside Bilbo, but after a moment butted his fingers with his head, as if in some form of comfort.

“Well, don’t get me wrong, my new friend,” he said, with something of a bitter smile. “I don’t want to leave them, but, well. My last moments in the Mountain didn’t quite go to plan, and I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be welcome after all of this.”

But by Eru, he would miss them.

Ori, and the ink stains on his fingers, the shy way he smiled whenever someone praised his drawings – only a hobby, he’d tell Bilbo, quietly. It’s nothing special – though of course, they were far better than anything Bilbo could have achieved. Oin’s quiet voice as he sang, sometimes slipping out of tune but still a sweet, rich sound. Watching Bombur braid his hair and beard, and then wave a grumbling Bifur over, to try and tame that thick, salt-and-pepper hair into something presentable. The way Nori hummed when he was cleaning his knives, and never quite seemed to notice that he was; the way that Dwalin looked over each member of the Company when he thought that no one was watching, a strange and certain softness falling over the hard lines of his face.

Balin’s laughter, the rich and heavy tones of it, all the louder when someone told a particularly lewd joke, and Dori grumbling at the same time, though there was always an odd sort of look about his face, as if he were trying not to laugh too. The way that Gloin insisted on Bilbo explaining his entire family tree to him, fascinated by just how many relatives one creature could have, laughing childishly like a faunt whenever Bilbo regaled him with any particularly amusing anecdote. Bofur’s arm, warm around his shoulder in comfort, and the soft creases at the corner of his eyes whenever he grinned.

The way that Kili started to bound over rock and stone, like some puppy only just discovering his legs. So young, so full of life and love to give. Bilbo would have liked to have watched him mature, at his own, slow pace.

Fili’s gaze, sure and firm, as he watched them all, constantly checking that everyone was alright; the way he tugged on his braids when he was thinking too hard. He would make an excellent King, he truly would, but he should have had longer to enjoy being young.

A strange family, to be sure.

But as they had sat in Laketown, huddled around in the house that the Master had finally given them after much persuasion, they had felt like kin, like a band of brothers, exhausted but united in this common goal, and he had loved them all in that moment with a fierce and proud love, one which he knew still would never die.

And then he had glanced up, to find the one member of their party not with them: Thorin was stood by the fireplace, his eyes out of the window and on the distant shape of Erebor, almost indistinct in the setting light of the day, but he must have caught the movement, for he had turned back and offered Bilbo, for just a moment, a smile.

 A warm, hopeful sort of smile, and Bilbo had been lost all over again.

It was only as he came back from his thoughts that he realised that the raven had gone; perhaps he had beaten the first test, then.

He squared his shoulders, and carried on.

The trees were as peculiar as he remembered, full of thick silence and uncomfortable whispers, but none of them came from behind him, came from the one voice that he longed so desperately now to hear.

Instead, after what could only have been moments but felt uncomfortably like years, came another.

“You’re taking too long, little one.”

He started, staring around him, searching desperately for the source of that strangely familiar voice. Where was he? For though Bilbo had cursed the old grey wizard several times for getting him involved in this mad quest, he would have dearly loved to see Gandalf right now, even in this strange and unpleasant place.

As if the voice itself had summoned it, the ash began to fall thicker, and Bilbo realised suddenly that the unpleasant taste of the fruit that had lingered in his mouth was beginning to fade. His time here was coming to an end, he thought with a sudden moment of clarity as he brushed ash from his arms, streaking them with grey even further.

What would happen to the spirit that might be behind him, should he fail?

What would happen to him?

But his thoughts were distracted as, from around the back of a tree that was far too thin to hide it properly, came a great warg, its fur as white as the creature that the Pale Orc had once ridden. But Bilbo could not quite bring himself to be afraid, for in its face were set the keen grey-blue eyes of the old wizard himself.  

“Gandalf?” he asked, and the great warg bared its teeth in a snarl at him.

“You’re running out of time!” it snapped, and Bilbo nodded, picking up his pace. But the warg did not leave him be, just as the raven had not. It walked alongside him as the ash fell ever thicker, padding in and out of the trees and the mist.

“Not fast enough!” it barked, and though its voice was still Gandalf’s, it had a harder edge to it, more than just anger. This was rage, black and without purpose. Bilbo had never heard him speak like that, and he started, shying away from that perilous wrath.

The warg’s teeth were sharp in his jaw as he snarled again, and though he spoke only to Bilbo his gaze was on something behind him, something that Bilbo did not quite dare to look at.

“Run to your precious fool,” the warg growled, “see already how he draws his sword to protect you.”

But that made Bilbo pause, for just a moment, before he started walking again, with a quicker pace than before.

“The interesting part of that, of course,” he said, sounding a little more calm that he honestly felt. “Is that Thorin would protect me. I know that, without question. Even in the deepest moments of his madness, when there was nothing but desire for hoarded gold and stone, I choose to believe that there was enough of him left willing to protect me, somewhere deep down inside himself, that he did not throw me over those battlements, but let me live, instead.”

He rubbed his hand against his nose as he stepped over a tree root, and he offered a small smile to the warg.

“And I am not afraid of you,” he told the great beast. “I would once have been, but I have seen too much since I first left the Shire to be any more. You are but a shade, my old friend, with sharp teeth and a honeyed voice to snare me admittedly, but there is nothing here that can hurt me with anything but their words.”

He glanced up, for a moment, at the sky.

“Words and time, at least,” he muttered, more to himself.

He was coming to the end of the forest now, and already he could see the rise of the hill, and that one tree that sat on top of it.

“And the fact of the matter is, old thing, I am just as able to protect Thorin as he is me. I’ve done it enough, over the last few months, you know.”

The warg seemed to frown, its ears lying flat against its skull.

“And Gandalf has always believed in my ability to look after myself, perhaps more than I have ever believed in myself. You don’t make for a very convincing imitation of him, if you can’t even get that right.”

He’d sent Bilbo off on a quest to kill a dragon and reclaim a Kingdom after all, with nothing more than his second-best dinner jacket and no handkerchiefs whatsoever.

Even when Bilbo had been in Erebor, and he’d put the Arkenstone in his pocket, knowing full well that it might well destroy every tentative thing that could have been between him and Thorin, he’d known that Gandalf would agree with his decision. And when he had been cast out, he had been proved right, in the end: the old wizard had embraced him, holding him close to his chest, and whispered only soft words of praise and comfort in his ear.

He paused, at the last tree, and rested his hand against the bark. The warg was behind him, but he did not turn to look at him.

“You might want to work on your riddles, too,” he said, with something of a smile about his mouth. “Good fireworks might have convinced me more, or some fine smoke rings. Either way, work on the act.”

He wasn’t quite sure if he had heard the soft whine that followed him as he took the hill, one step at a time, but he rather hoped that he hadn’t imagined it.

And then at least he was at the tree, up on top of that hill, and the ash was falling so thick that he could no longer see the mountain, and he could barely see the forest: it did not fall on this tree, though: the ground underneath the great cover of its branches was untouched, still barren of grass or plants.

“Hullo, lad,” came one more voice, and at this point Bilbo wasn’t even particularly surprised by the sight of one last figure leaning against the trunk of the tree, one final test for him before he left this world and returned to his own.

“Good afternoon, Dad,” he answered, and for a moment he longed for his pipe, to sit with his father for a few moments and to share some Old Toby with the man he had missed for so many years. But there was still ash falling in his hair and the slow ache of loss in his chest, and though he felt a little regret, he did not sit at his father’s feet, as he had done when he was younger.

“Is it afternoon?” Bungo replied, his tone irritable and grumpy, just as it had done when caterpillars had gotten to his lettuces. He glared up at the sky, where no familiar sun was visible to the eye. “Hard to tell in this blasted light. Awful growing light, this. No flowers’ll open at all if it doesn’t brighten up.”

Bilbo couldn’t help but smile, a slow and sad smile, as he looked down at the barren ground for a moment.

“I don’t think that is a major concern here, you know.”

Bungo huffed a laugh hoarse with too many pipes and late night tankards of ale.

“Aye, perhaps not.”

Bilbo watched him for a moment longer.

“I have to go, you know. I’m on something of a schedule.”

It was his father’s turn to look away this time, his eyes on the indistinct distance, and when he spoke again his voice was laced with a certain bitterness, some strange and hollow sadness, as if he knew something that Bilbo simply did not.

“How do you know he’s behind you, son?”

Bilbo just shrugged. It seemed a very similar question to the one that the Creator had asked him, back in the cave: how did he know that Thorin loved him? And the answer was quite the same as it has ever been.

“I don’t.”

His father shook his head at that, and continued to look away.

“Isn’t it worth checking, just once, just to make sure? To save yourself the grief of getting back to wherever it is you’ve run off from, only to find out that none of this was real?”

Bilbo huffed a short, quiet laugh, and at that this thing that might have been his father looked back at him, an expression of such sadness in his gaze that Bilbo hardly knew where to look. It was so close to the way he remembered his father looking whenever Belladonna had started taking out her maps again, had started pouring over those much loved charts that pointed to so many exciting places far beyond the borders of the Shire, that it stirred some old pain that he had almost forgotten in his heart. He remembered those long summers with his father whilst his mother was off on adventures, and had thought that he would never be the one to leave Bag End empty. How wrong he had been, in the end.

“These creatures, they’re far beyond you or I, lad. They don’t care about us… we’re just a game to them, you know that. This might be nothing more than a trick to get you to leave.” Bungo’s voice was desperate now, pleading, but Bilbo just shook his head.

“It is a shame,” he answered, as he padded past him. “You are as poor an imitation of my actual father as the first shade was of my mother, you know.”

This Bungo, as indistinct around the edges as the shade of his mother had been, wavered for a moment in the hazy air.

“She’d have never told me to turn away, and my father always taught me to honour a promise given, and to believe that others would, too.” Bilbo tucked his hands into his pockets, and carried on walking.

“There’s nothing more important than a man’s word, he used to say to me. Nothing you should value higher, apart from maybe those petunias the Gaffer grows. Never seen colours like them, he’d tell me – and neither have I, for that matter. Fantastic colours.”

Perhaps the shade of Bilbo’s father smiled; perhaps he did not. He was already disappearing into nothing as Bilbo took to the other side of the hill, and Bilbo raised his hand in farewell, calling out his last words without turning back.

“Great man, my father. He’d have thought I was mad, for all this business, but a great man, none the less.”

He never saw what happened to that tree, or to that grey and hazy place. He suspected that it had drifted into nothing as strangely as it had first appeared, when he had arrived here… and was that minutes, hours, or days ago? He could no longer tell. There was a small twinge of regret that he could not look back at that greatest of mountains, but he swallowed it down, knowing that he could not bring himself to look back, not yet.

There was the smell of blood and fire on the air again.

From behind him, he thought he might have heard the softest of noises, some gentle sigh, but it could just have been the whisper of the breeze.

Mud, under his feet, thick and somehow real again.

He walked on.

“What’s wrong with him?”

He felt, he realised, very tired: that kind of bone-heavy exhaustion that makes it almost impossible even to lift your head.

“I don’t know – quick, someone call for a healer!”

He was cold, too, and there was a pain in his head, though he had quite forgotten the wound he had sustained in the battle until now.

“Oin!”

What on earth was all this commotion?

“Someone get Gandalf!”

Arms around him, lifting him gently into a sitting position, and he let out a noise of protest, struggling weakly against the hold around him.

“Bilbo, lad, wake up!”

The voices were clearer now, and wasn’t that Bofur’s voice, calling out in concern to him? He forced his eyes open and his sight was a little blurry, but then a familiar, lined face came into view.

“Bilbo!” the dwarf cried, in some exhausted joy. “Oh, thank the Maker!” He hugged the Hobbit tightly then, almost too tight, and he had to struggle a little in protest before Bofur loosened his grip. “What happened, lad? We came back for you, and for Thorin’s… well, and you were just lying here in the mud. We’ve been trying to wake you!”

He pulled himself from Bofur’s embrace, sliding back to the cold, wet ground; it had started to rain, he realised now, a cool, light rain. He ignored the protests from the dwarves around him – his dwarves, he realised from their voices, all calling out in fear and worry, and wasn’t it right that his family was here around him now? – and scrambled across the ground towards Thorin, instead.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been… away, how long he had lain here in the mire next to the body of the dwarf that he loved, but he could feel the chill of the earth in his bones, and his hands shook as they found his way to Thorin’s face.

His beard was rough beneath Bilbo’s fingers, and his skin was cold, still.

“Thorin,” he said, a ghost of a whisper. “Thorin, I didn’t look back.”

Was it the rain that was turning his cheeks damp, or something else?

“They tried to make me, but I didn’t,” he said again, so quietly he could barely hear it himself.

“I didn’t,” he repeated, his voice breaking on the last word.

There was a hand on his shoulder, comforting words being spoken by heartbroken voices, but he could barely hear them, he hardly cared: he watched instead that pale, beautiful face, as still and cold as marble, and believed.

And then-

The slightest of movements, under his hand.

Bilbo pressed his fingers to Thorin’s throat.

A fluttering pulse, faint but there.

Those still, blue lips parted, just enough to take a shallow breath.

Everything fell to silence around them as one by one the dwarves surrounding Thorin noticed that their King was-

“He’s alive,” came Balin’s almost disbelieving voice.

A deeper breath then, and Thorin’s eyes fluttered, and cheers broke out around them, but Bilbo didn’t look away. He watched as Thorin took deeper and deeper breaths, as colour flooded back into his cheeks in some great and beautiful rush, his hands still against Thorin’s skin, where he could touch, and then his eyes were opening again, that steely blue that Bilbo had thought he would never see again, and Thorin Oakenshield was blinking into the light, tired and a little confused looking, blood streaked across his face and mud in his braids, but alive.

And Bilbo laughed, a sound as bright in the dying light of the evening as any birdsong.

“My boys,” were his first words, hoarse and unsure. “Fili and Kili-”

“They’re alive,” Bilbo told him, his voice soft. “Resting up, in the healers tents.”

“They’ll live?” Thorin asked, and Bilbo smiled.

“Aye, lad,” said Balin from somewhere behind Bilbo. “We just had word. The both of them’ll live. I’ll take Kili a couple of months to be walking right and Fili’ll have one hell of a headache, but they’ll live.”

Some great tension seemed to fall from Thorin at that, and his eyes turned once more to Bilbo.

He thought, for one long moment, that his heart might stop.

“Bilbo,” Thorin said, and his voice was a whisper. He nodded, and Thorin reached for him, wincing as he lifted a hand to cup his cheek; Bilbo’s own hand rose, to keep it in place.

The rain was growing heavier now, but Bilbo could not bring himself to care as he blinked water from his eyes.

Ash was melting in his hair and coursing faint grey tracks down his face.

Thorin smiled.

“There was a mist,” he said, quite quietly, “and I could not find my way out.”

Bilbo nodded, and his other hand found Thorin’s hair, holding it perhaps a little too tightly, still a little afraid that none of this was real, that all of this was just some great and bittersweet delusion.  

“It was cold,” Thorin said to him, his fingertips stroking Bilbo’s cheek. “And then was a light.”

Bilbo nodded, and there was definitely more than rainwater on his face now, but the corner of Thorin's mouth was curving into a smile, his eyes that bright and clear blue once more, no longer carrying a shade of madness in them. “A bright, burning flame in that haze.”

He could hear Balin laughing behind him, and Dwalin crying, and Bilbo wasn’t sure any longer which he might do himself: either seemed equally as possible, and right now he barely cared.

“It was you,” Thorin told him, and there was so much warmth in his eyes that they were almost too much to look at, so much joy and laughter and a great, impossible love that Bilbo was quite certain was mirrored in his own.

“You were there, so… I followed.”

Bilbo nodded.

“They tried to make you look back.”

“No sense in looking backwards,” Bilbo replied, sniffing, taking one hand from Thorin’s hair to rub at his nose. More than any other time on this damned, ridiculous, wonderful quest, he could have done with a handkerchief. “No sense at all. There is a great world of forwards out there, isn’t there?”

Thorin’s smile grew, just a little wider.

“Countless days ahead,” he replied, “to live.”

And then Bilbo kissed him, Thorin’s hand still gentle around his cheek as he pulled Bilbo just a little closer, to kiss him back.

“Aye,” Bilbo answered, his words mumbled against a smiling mouth, breath warm against his cheek, and there was such a sweetness to be had in speaking his reply.

“To live.”