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Chapter Text

The longer that Bilbo Baggins stared at the innocent looking gold ring on his dining table, the more he came to the conclusion that he didn’t like the thing very much. In fact, he disliked it almost as much as the look on Lobelia’s face whenever she found him back from his travels, as if she’d stepped in hog manure. The ring was, arguably, more useful than Lobelia, but it was almost as upsetting when it chose to be.

“Well?” he challenged, raising an eyebrow. His voice and the brief clinking of silver on china as he stirred his tea were the only sounds filling Bag End on this warm afternoon.

The ring was suspiciously quiet.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were sulking,” the hobbit informed it, removing the tea leaves from his cup.

The answering silence was rather loud.

Bilbo shrugged, sipping his tea. “Be that way, then. Goddess knows I’ve had enough of your foul commentary.” Since the Shire folk had recently taken to calling him “Mad Baggins” as though he had no other first name, he wasn’t terribly concerned that he was talking to an object.

He had been rather concerned when it began talking in the first place, but he had long since grown used to it.

Turning his attention away from the troublesome ring, Bilbo washed his cup and put it away, then returned to the dining table to shoulder the pack that waited there. “Well,” he reflected, patting his coat absently. “I do believe that’s everything. Let’s see, what have I forgotten? Instructions for Hamfast in his mailbox, threatening note to Lobelia on the door, poem for Erestor packed in with the note books … aha!” He’d spotted his traveling cloak on the back of his old armchair. He’d had to replace it after a wolf got ahold of its predecessor last summer. That predecessor, Traveling Cloak IX, had been retired to a chest in the spare room rather than broken down for materials in thanks for providing the wolf with something to grab that was not hobbit flesh. Smiling at the memory of the expression on the tailor’s face and the way he’d sighed, “Again, Mister Bilbo? Ye sure is hard on yer clothing,” Bilbo secured the cloak around his neck.

Everything else was packed snugly in the saddlebags slung over his pony’s back. Buttercup was a temperamental thing, but she had served him well for two years now and he liked to think that they had an understanding between them. He provided food, refrained from riding unless wounded or exhausted, and dried her off well after asking that she walk through the rain. She in turn refrained from biting his unsuspecting person when she felt mischievous and puffing full of air like a pompous rooster when he tried to saddle her. And the apples he spoiled her with likely didn’t hurt their relationship.

Yes, he was as prepared as one could be for the Road.

That only left one final item.

He hadn’t deluded himself into thinking this would be easy. Bilbo took a deep breath, then another. He tapped his bare toes against the floor, reaching for memories of his strong-willed mother, his steadfast father -

Dead, the ring reminds him, clipped, cruel, precise. The ring whispers that everyone is dead, that he may as well be, but that he will feel so a l i v e if he would only slip the thin band over his finger -

Finger nails biting into his palms, he thinks of Thorin.

Thorin who fell, who was weak, the ring sneered. Thorin who would have let you fall.

Thorin, who had come out of his madness for his people, Bilbo thought resolutely, lashing out at the foul thoughts. Thorin, who brushed the braids out of his nephews’ faces in the morning before waking them. Thorin, who once confessed, voice heavy with shame, that he saw two dwarrow when he looked at golden-haired Fili. Thorin, who only wanted to be enough for his people, who had thought for so long that he could MAKE himself into what they needed through sheer will alone. Thorin, who looked at the Elvenking and saw what he would rather die than become.

Thorin, who was dead too, and Bilbo prayed that he was happy in Mahal’s Halls of Waiting or wherever he had chosen to reside. He hoped that the king didn’t blame himself.

Bilbo knew him well enough to know that he would blame himself anyway. He can only pray that there are enough dwarrow who love him in the Halls to comfort him and make him see sense since the hobbit was not there to do it himself.

So he pushed his old grief away and focused on the thought of Thorin as he had been when alive. Fearless, intense, dedicated - the Thorin who had taught him how to be brave.

Bilbo fixed the ring a firm look as moments stretched into minutes. His hands curled where they were tucked into his coat pockets, wishing for it, for the blessed nothing that enveloped him when he put the ring on his finger. How all the noise and pain and loneliness would fade away like it had never settled in his heart to rot. He felt rooted to the spot, the sun beginning to sink slowly from its noon height. He was trembling now, and he swallowed against a dry throat. He wanted it. He loathed it. He needed it.

He might have stared indefinitely, caught in a tug-of-war between his will and the ring’s own, had Buttercup not chosen to whinny loudly from the yard, voicing her impatience. The sharp sound, and the journey it implied, jolted Bilbo from his musings. Before he could think any more about it, the hobbit scooped the ring up, ignoring how right it felt against his palm, and started for his bedroom. The ring’s pull was gnawing at his mind but he shook his head resolutely, taking longer strides. He felt a sudden pulse of heat from the ring – alarm? he wondered with a cruel smile curving his mouth – as he dropped it, no, hurled it into the opening beneath the floor board he had loosened. He bit his lip until he tasted blood at the wrenching agony of letting it go (you will never escape your pain without me!), but he did not allow himself to pick it back up. He viciously stomped the board back into place over it and shifted the dresser until one of its legs rested over the board. Panting with exertion, though the dresser had been quite light, he slumped back against the wall and gasped, “There, monster! You stay here this time. Useful you may be, but Buttercup will make far better company.”

Indeed, the ring’s occasional hateful comments and voluble approval of violence in all forms was all the hard evidence Bilbo needed that the ring was poor company. But it was the … the other thing, the drain that made his temper flare and his footsteps drag, that he could not attribute to the ring with certainty. Not yet, at least. He aimed to find out soon.

Bilbo took a few steadying breaths before leaving the room, closing the door firmly behind him. He did not allow himself to linger, not with it still so tantalizingly close. He felt confident that his friend and gardener Hamfast Gamgee would enforce his rule that no hobbit be allowed to enter Bag End while he was gone, only draw water from the well outside to tend his plants. His letter to Lobelia, in which he threatened to go to the Thane himself if there was any noise at all about her maneuvering to seize his home, should be sufficient to scare her off for the duration of his trip.

Satisfied with the security of the ring’s hiding spot, Bilbo paused with his hand on the doorknob and allowed himself a lingering look at his home. It looked much as it had when he’d left it behind for the Lonely Mountain almost nineteen years ago, save for scattered mementos of his recent outings like the battered goblin’s shield serving out its second life as a general catch-all of uninteresting letters, bills of sale, and irate diatribes from the Sackville-Bagginses.

No, nineteen years hadn’t changed much in Bag End, except how easy it was to leave behind.

Suppressing a wince, he closed the round green door and murmured apologies to the unimpressed Buttercup. Her demeanor improved when he produced an apple, the pony’s ears perking forward with interest as she munched away. Bilbo rubbed the white star on her face affectionately. She was an attractive animal with a reddish mane and a rare grey roan coat. A friendly man he’d met while passing through the Gulf of Lune had sold her to him for a pretty sum despite his initial plans to keep her for breeding. He’d had a change of heart after seeing the warmth in Bilbo’s demeanor as he cooed over the pony, a decision helped by the memory of his potential broodmare nearly breaking his favorite stallion’s leg with a kick when he’d gotten a little too familiar. Bilbo understood perfectly. He’d taken many a soul to task for poor manners.

“Well, girl,” the hobbit said wearily, taking her reins loosely in hand, “what do you say we go see the elves?”

The mare snorted, as if querying him about what took him so long. But she butted her head gently into his hair, snuffling as if he was a foal that needed checking on. He managed a laugh through his cracked throat – had he been screaming? – and forced his legs to move.

The hobbits he passed only offered a nod or a wave, if that. No one attempted to stop him these days. They were used to his comings and goings, though they judged him for it. He cast a careful eye about for a familiar riot of dark curls but sighed in relief when Lobelia was nowhere to be seen. His steps felt heavy as he put greater distance between himself and his door, the ring a piercing shriek in the back of his mind. Every time his steps faltered and he almost turned, he would feel the tug at his hands as Buttercup trudged ahead without him or have her tail flicked at him in irritation, urging her daydreaming foal to keep up.

Somehow, he managed. Though his heart was hammering and his hands were clammy and he felt rather faint and in need of a lie-down, he managed, and was almost startled to find that he had reached the Road. Unthinkingly, he curled his toes into the familiar worn earth. It felt more like home than the floors of Bag End these days, and his soul relaxed just a bit.

The ring’s shriek grew fainter in his mind as he passed the farmer’s fields and climbed the rolling hills, but he felt a familiar something growing taut, like a wire stretched too tight. He ignored it, as he had for years. He had no energy for that old nonsense right now. He shook it away, like Buttercup would a fly. It coiled ever tighter, insisting that he pay attention because something was happening, but he pretended it was no more than the wind whistling past his ears. He had just passed the spot where, in another time, Sam Gamgee would hesitate, voice soft and scared at the sheer scope of the world, because it was the farthest from home he’d ever been, when, to Bilbo’s great surprise, the insistent, tightening, fraying something-

- snapped.

Bilbo dropped the reins in shock, his ears ringing. The air left him as if he’d taken a blow to the gut. He didn’t know that he’d fallen to his knees until there was a worried muzzle nuzzling into his curly hair, but he didn’t have the words to comfort Buttercup. The world had … tilted, and he wasn’t certain that it had righted itself yet.

Because long before there had been a pretty golden ring filling his mind with selfish urges and dark suggestions, there had been the steady presence of the something in the back of his mind, a faint hum that never faded.

And the sudden silence in his mind was downright terrifying.

Chapter Text

It was so … quiet.

Bilbo heaved air into his lungs and braced his trembling hands against the ground where he knelt, his fingertips pressing into the soil, trying to ground himself. Sometimes the very earth can comfort a hobbit, helping them connect to the Green Lady through the soil that all plants grow from.

It wasn’t helping.

His pony shoved her way unceremoniously through the surrounding crops as she circled around to his other side, her nose nudging all over him to figure out where he was injured. She knocked over an old scarecrow in the process. When he still did not rise, Buttercup gave a shrill whinny, demanding that he get back on his hooves and stop whatever nonsense he was up to immediately.

He tried to steady his breathing. His fingernails bit into the earth until they began to bend back and bleed. The pain helped him think. He needed – he needed to think. He closed his eyes.

And listened.

He heard his own breathing, uneven and labored. The pounding of his blood in his eardrums. Somewhere in the distance, the farmer’s children were playing a game. One would scream and then the others would too, high sounds of joyful fear. A flock of geese honked overhead on their way to Gondor. A breeze caressed the stalks of corn, making them sway and whisper. He heard the crack of wood under one of Buttercup’s hooves as she stamped uneasily on the felled scarecrow.

And absolutely nothing else.

All his life there had been something else. It lay behind everything, an invisible thread wrapped around him, a faint hum that never faded. When he was young, he assumed everyone had the same something back there somewhere, and he was curious what the grownups called it. But their concerned faces when he asked taught him to keep quiet about it lest he be sent to the healer and pestered with questions about voices in his head. Maybe only the younger ones had it, and he reasoned that they had forgotten about it once they became grownup gentlehobbits. But his playmates didn’t seem to have it either, heads tilted in confusion when he mentioned it, telling him to stop being silly and come play.

That didn’t stop him from listening to it, though. Sometimes it was the drone of a distant bee hive and other times it was a melody that he found himself humming along with before growing bored of its sameness. The singing thread would tighten in warning when he reached for an unsteady branch while climbing or when his Tookish cousins made a particularly hazardous suggestion for the day’s activities. It tugged gently when he ventured too far into the darkness hoping to catch just one more firefly so that the ones in the jar would not be lonely, urging him to retrace his footsteps back to Bag End. And there was one evening when he’d been meandering through the woods and heard a yip and started toward it, thinking that it must be one of the visiting townsfolk’s new pups. The something had pulled taut like the smack of a towel on little cookie-thieving hands so suddenly that it sent him scampering home long before he heard a single, rising howl.

It never hurt, exactly. But he learned too late that it promised pain.

He should have known when it constricted at the chorus of howls outside his door that long night during the Fell Winter and his father still wasn’t back yet. The warning did him little good. His father died anyway, and there was precious little of Bungo Baggins left to bury.

From then on he resolved to ignore the damned thing, even if it sometimes felt rather nice, like a mother’s lullaby as you fall asleep. Something to tell you that you are never alone, not really. But then his mother was dead too, an apology on her lips for leaving him so soon, and that comforting hum felt like a mockery of her, a blaspheme. He forced it to the back of his mind where it couldn’t touch him. Whatever comfort it offered could never change the fact that Bungo and Belladonna Baggins were dead, and that he had to live with that. So he did his best to pretend that it wasn’t even there, and he picked himself up off the floor and lived.

He was doing a pretty good job of ignoring it entirely, right up until Gandalf the Gray interrupted his quiet afternoon smoke and the something pulled tight so quickly that his eyes crossed. As he sputtered ‘good mornings’ it had more to do with the maddening, humming tension in his head than with the fact that the wizard had just said the a-word. Bilbo practically flew back into his house, leaning against the door with his throbbing head in his hands. He had never been confronted with a something so sharply. Bilbo had to drink three cups of his most calming tea before his heart rate slowed and the coiled mess inside his skull became manageable.

So he really wasn’t all that surprised when thirteen dwarves showed up uninvited for dinner with wild talk of dragons and treasure, eating everything in sight. Upset, sure. But not surprised. He was just happy that no one had died this time. He’d been fully prepared to say “good day” to the whole business until he heard the low rumble of the King Under the Mountain’s song and felt the something wrap around his throat and give a mighty squeeze. As he drifted off into exhausted sleep, lulled by the chorus, he wondered what could be so important, or so dangerous, about Thorin-bloody-mannerless-Oakenshield.

When he woke up and found his home put to rights and empty, he almost convinced himself that he’d dreamed the whole thing up. But the something was pressing on his mind, climbing in pitch, and it rose to a soprano when his eyes landed on the contract that Balin had left behind. It practically yanked him out his door after the line of Durin. He knew that he was about to get himself in a heap of trouble, but he was helpless to stop himself from throwing together what few supplies came to mind and running after that trouble. And as he ran, he wondered if maybe this was what the something was all about - getting him somewhere he needed to go. He figured that he’d know one way or another, if the humming was still there once he saw this through.

Bilbo soon forgot all about the something in the flurry of activity between trolls and wargs and elves (oh, the elves) and moody, incomprehensible dwarrow and those wretched goblins.

But the something didn’t forget about him, and he felt Gollum creeping up behind him, felt his bare feet press against stone and tense to spring.

It was not instinct, whatever it was. It was a muted roar in his mind when he touched a plain golden ring for the first time and it was the snap of sharp teeth behind his eyelids when the pale eyes of a very pale orc locked onto those of the exasperating exiled king. Of course he would have to save him, because this entire journey had been ridiculous.

And then it all went to shit and he was going home and nothing Gandalf did or said could make him any less miserable, and the damned something twinged. It was still there. He entertained a brief fantasy of digging it out with a knife, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. It seemed … subdued, almost. So Bilbo accepted that it might just always be there.

And then he went home.

He lasted six months.

The peace was killing him.

Bilbo hadn't moped around like a sack of potatoes after he got home. Oh, he spent a great many days weeping, now that Gandalf wasn't there for him to be embarrassed about. And he spent several months salvaging his poor garden. He set about saving it with an almost feverish intensity, but so what? It was important to him, dammit. And it was easier. Flowers didn’t make worried faces and sympathetic comments and invite him over for dinner if he cried in front of them. They simply asked that he not do so on top of them, what with the salt water and all.

Despite his honest intentions not to, Bilbo had become unsociable. He politely turned away most callers and declined the majority of invitations. He chose his company carefully for their avoidance of personal questions (the Gamgees) or their ability to fill the silence on their own (the Tooks). Many in Hobbiton muttered about the possibility that leaving the Shire for too long made one actually ill, sick enough to make a hobbit act, well, unhobbity.

So Bilbo gardened, and baked, and walked familiar paths late at night when no one was around to bother him. And then the garden was perfect and everything was in bloom and he had nothing to do with himself and that time he cried out of sheer frustration. As a landlord with a considerable fortune now augmented by a chest of gold that he didn’t want, there was no job he needed to do, nothing urgent to give him a purpose. He wished he could just melt into the earth with his flowers and become part of the life around him on a much smaller, less complex scale. He was pretty sure that lady bugs never felt so lost.

And when he wasn’t miserable or sleeping, he was simply … bored. The Shire was beautiful, peaceful, and safe. And boring. He had been unceremoniously yanked out of his minor self-imposed isolation by the dratted wizard and had been busy every moment since. He’d longed for his home for almost two years and now that he was finally home he itched because he had nothing to do.

When he realized that he just couldn’t sit still any longer, he finally came to terms with a hard truth. He was not a proper hobbit anymore. More than that, he may as well not even call himself a hobbit, for what hobbit’s wanderlust wouldn’t be satisfied after his year and a half long adventure of the highest order? Oh yes, he would certainly fail any hobbit qualification tests. But while he packed (more carefully this time), he didn’t feel all that upset about his failings. In fact, he hardly cared at all. A further sign of his strangeness, no doubt.

Or perhaps it was a sign that he was willing to let a few things go. Like pocket handkerchiefs, being "proper" just wasn't as important as it used to be.

Joining up with the Bounders had been a sound decision. It got him on his feet and moving and talking to other living people, though it did keep him close to home. He hoped that it wasn’t the Shire that was the problem. That it wasn’t difficult to talk to his kin because they were hobbits and not hard-headed dwarrow. He hoped that if he just found something to occupy himself with then he could keep the bitterness, the emptiness, pushed back. He didn’t delude himself into thinking it would fill that emptiness, just … he really hoped it could distract him from it.

They were good fellows, twenty-nine in number, often patrolling in groups of five. He helped them patrol the boundaries of the Shire and kept a wary eye out for trouble. They were an unlikely mix, a hodgepodge of last names and every age from thirty-three to one hundred. The Tooks made up the largest group, bright-eyed and energetic, always racing ahead of the others to scout.

And even they found him strange.

Oh, they were very welcoming, grateful for the help and the new face around the fire. Hobbits generally find the lifestyle too restless, and most leave when they marry. He saw a familiar pain reflected in some of their eyes and remembered that many bounders joined because their spouse passed on. Many potential members were scared off by the restriction of their number of daily meals to five, allowing them to cover more ground in a day. Bilbo hardly minded. He’d lived off two to three meals a day for a year, and then whatever he managed to choke down on the way home. He hadn’t been eating regularly since he got back, either. He just ate when he felt able. Sometimes it helped. More often he gave freshly baked pies to his neighbors. At first, they had been willing enough to take the gift at face-value, but when they saw his already-slim frame grow even slighter, they began to frown and ask questions. So he started only taking food to the Gamgees and the schoolhouse. Hearing the excited cries of “Mister Bilbo!” and “Luncheon!” took the chill off his heart for a while. Perhaps if he managed to get rid of this restlessness then he would see about becoming a teacher. He liked the idea of telling the little ones stories every day.

But for the time being, he wandered. And as he made his twentieth circuit of the Shire with no trouble to speak of, he felt the itch grow until it almost burned. For all that he was moving, he wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was the awful feeling clinging to him. He isn’t sure what to call it, but Bilbo is pretty sure that it is more than one of what his Aunt Binnie would call “the moods.” This is … sticky, like tar. It clings to him, weighs him down. And every time he shakes it off, it eventually creeps back to smother him again.

The only Bounder he had anything in common with was Benji, a Brandybuck who felt the pull of adventure. Benji mistook his restlessness for wanderlust, saw himself in Bilbo. He didn’t have the heart to tell Benji that they should have met as kids and that as far as he was concerned the adventurous Bilbo Baggins was gone. Despite his dour mood, they became good friends, and he made Bilbo smile. Eight months passed slowly, but not always painfully. He could feel his restlessness growing with each day, and began to reflect more often on the ever-present something, on what it could mean. The more he reflected on the way it had pulled him out his door, the more he suspected that its continued hum meant that there would be something else required of him eventually.

He was honestly relieved when they encountered the goblins. He’d been itching for a fight to test out his hypothesis, that this excitement and fear were what he’d been missing. However, he was far more concerned with where his sword needed to go and ensuring that a goblin scout didn’t get behind him and keeping an eye on his fellow Bounders to know if he felt any better. He certainly wasn’t thinking about his dwarves while he drove Sting into the neck of a goblin who had Gemsen pinned down, nor when he ducked below a spear to slice open a femoral artery. He was thinking about survival, and his new friends, and the razor-soft instructions the ring offered from his pocket, urging him to kill them all, promising that it would be so much easier if he’d just slip it around his finger … But then that single-minded focus faded because it was over and the goblins were dead and Cornflower had a spear in her shoulder.

He held her still while their healer stitched her up and he noticed the others, most of whom were shaking, looking at him with bewilderment and something like awe. They acted like he must have nerves of steel, as if not being rattled by a few goblins was something to be praised. And with a slightly hysterical laugh, he realized that this wasn’t going to work. The Bounders were more of a regional police force than a militia, and the type of skirmish he’d been a part of was extremely rare. Wolves were far more common than goblins, and they hadn’t been a real problem in twenty-five years. If they became a nuisance, archers would lay in wait while the animals took the bait set out for them. Injuries were usually from accidents like falls and sprained ankles.

It was just so peaceful.

And he couldn’t do it.

The Rangers were the next logical step. He sent word to the northern Ranger group that the Bounders coordinated with, asking that they consider accepting him as a recruit, if only on a trial basis. The next time that their monthly meeting with the Bounders took place, two Men studied him for a long time before speaking with him. They just couldn’t understand why a hobbit would want to join the Rangers, nor did they know what use he could be to them. He told them that he had journeyed with some dwarves to their homeland through orc country, and how he had been used as a scout because his step was light and he was good at staying hid. He didn’t mention the ring, never mind that the thing hissed from his pocket that they would try to take it from him. Bilbo just wanted to keep that private, an ace up his sleeve in a tight spot. Yes. That was the only reason.

They told him that they would report back to their commander and send word to him when a decision had been made. And when a messenger hawk arrived three weeks later with a missive saying that he was welcome in the Rangers, he found himself smiling, really smiling. If the something would not come to him, perhaps he could chase it down, and the Rangers roamed far. And his soul ached for the peace he’d felt around a raucous camp fire with warriors and craftsmen. He knew that it wouldn’t be the same, but perhaps it would be enough to satisfy his aching soul.

A week before he was due to leave, the Bounders threw him a farewell party. There was dancing and singing and plenty of ale, and Bilbo was touched. He hadn’t realized that they had come to care for him so much. He thanked them profusely and proclaimed with misty eyes that they were the very best of hobbits. He could only take so much dancing, though, and he retreated to the nearby riverbank to skip rocks, shaking his head fondly at the off-key singing he heard behind him. He startled slightly when Benji called to him, then smiled. His friend was lively, but he grew shy when a crowd became this rowdy, sticking close to Bilbo whenever they stopped in busy taverns for the night. Bilbo beckoned him over, inviting him to sit down. He hesitated, then sat. And Bilbo talked absently about the party and about how he’d miss them (not as much as you should, the ring cut in, making him wince) and what he hoped to see with the Rangers when Benji said his name in a funny way and he turned to look at him. The Brandybuck was wringing his hands and looked positively wretched.

“What’s wrong?” Bilbo had asked worriedly, placing a hand on his shoulder. Surely he would have noticed if his friend was sick-

Then Benji, excited and terrified, is asking for more than he can give, and Bilbo can’t help crying. For a long moment, he really had thought about it. He had perhaps forty years left, if he did not get himself killed sooner. Should he try to make a go of it, try to salvage some happiness? It would never be what Prim and Drogo had, the love that made it so painful to be around them. It probably wouldn’t fill the faint promise of something big, something that would fill him from head to toes (family), that had been gouged out of him as Thorin died in his arms.

But he made himself consider it, and it all came back to one thing. Could he make this hobbit he cared about happy? The answer was immediate, and it made his rejection easier to give. As he saw the deep sorrow quickly covered by a forced smile, the hole in Bilbo’s heart gaped wider than ever. Whatever fool said that time healed all ills was dropped on his head at birth, or else had never known the kind of hurt that festered in Bilbo Baggins. Benji trips over his words as he assures him that he understands, that he only wanted to be sure before Bilbo was gone with the Rangers and then he was sobbing because what if Bilbo never came back?

Bilbo gathered his friend to him and did his best to comfort him, never mentioning that he wouldn’t be all that upset if something did happen to bring his turmoil to an abrupt stop.

At least Benji didn’t believe that he was the cause of Bilbo’s departure. He hugged him fiercely when four Ranges came by to collect him, and Bilbo hugged back until they probably both had bruises. Eventually they broke apart and the last thing Bilbo saw while riding away was his friend’s waving hand, growing smaller in the distance.

The northern Rangers were good kids, good men. But they were so careful with him at first that he almost welcomed the orc that passed under his carefully positioned hiding spot among an ambush team, dropping onto its head and cleanly slicing its neck open. After that, the Rangers stopped seeing him as a lost child and welcomed him as a companion. And he became good friends with many of them, finding them far easier to relate to than other hobbits. And it helped that there were no hobbits among them to point out just how unnaturally good he was at going unnoticed. His “sneaking skills” proved a great asset even to the quiet Rangers, and he was able to give them detailed knowledge about nearby orc or goblin camps without ever getting caught. Scouting was considered one of their most dangerous jobs and had caused many deaths. One misplaced step, an unintentional sound, and the Rangers had lost a dear friend. While many were puzzled by his unaccountable success and the younger ones pestered him for tips on sneaking, they were more grateful than suspicious, and it felt good to be useful.

But no matter how far they roamed, the something refused to be anything more than a warm hand cradling his skull, a faint almost-sound. It offered no directions. So he decided to prepare for whatever it might finally coalesce into, because he had been woefully underprepared for his last great life development. He was determined to make himself into someone who would never be helpless again.

And it didn’t help. Every night Bilbo dreamed of fire and death and regret, and each day was plagued by bittersweet memories. In a strange way, being with the Rangers hurt more, because it felt so much closer to what he’d lost. He had picked himself up and tried to move on, move forward, but the past clung to him like spider webs. And if he were being honest, he hadn’t tried all that hard to break free of them. They gave him something to cling to, when his chest ached and the sticky, dragging feeling tried to swallow him whole.

He could recall how it hadn’t seemed real to him, the possibility – no, the near guarantee that some of his wonderful new ragtag adopted family of dwarves would die on their quest. He’d always assumed that if anyone were to die, he’d be the first to go. He’d been utterly unprepared to be the only one still standing on Raven Hill. It was ridiculous! The Durins were the best warriors he knew, and there he was, a soft little hobbit who should have never left home, with little more than a bump on his head while Thorin Oakenshield’s blood soaked through his clothes. It wasn’t right. And if the damned something intended to lead him into such cruel circumstances again, he would be ready this time.

He stayed with the Rangers for nearly six years. It was hard not to grow close to those you spent every waking moment with. His swordplay improved, and he learned how to shoot a bow, though they’d had to make him one that would fit his smaller stature. They only teased him about his size occasionally, more often making Rion their target, because, as they said, it was all well and good to be short if one was a hobbit, but what business did a Dúnedain have being so small? Though they had a sharper edge than the Bounders, their teasing was good natured and brotherly. And despite his best efforts, Bilbo ended up mothering them (their words, not his), especially the younger ones, fussing over their torn clothes and ordering them to go to sleep because they were dead on their feet and raising a severe eyebrow when he caught the boys at some mischief. Though his heart was sore and he didn’t sleep well and the dark mood still clung to him, he was (almost) content.

Then someone proposed to him, making such a great deal out of it with his flowery words that Bilbo was certain he were just playing a prank until he saw the earnest look in the kneeling man’s eyes. He’d let him down gently despite his shock, and Kallan took it well. He’d hoped that would be the end of it, but then two of the younger Rangers seemed to take this as some invisible signal to put their own hearts forward for consideration. Bilbo had no clue what was wrong with them. He’d never encouraged them, not in any way that he was aware of, and the commander took pity on him as he racked his brain for anything he might have done to lead them on. The older man had only a single eye, having lost the left to a goblin that thought his face looked tasty, but he always jokingly said that at 110 he felt glad to even have the one. His remaining eye was warm with compassion as he explained to the baffled hobbit, “You take care of them, and they love you for it. Men are especially drawn to those whom we know would make good parents, and they can’t help but see that in you.” He winked suddenly. “And it doesn’t hurt that you’re easy on the eyes.” He laughed at the sputtering hobbit, clapping him affectionately on the back. “Oh, they’ll pout, but I doubt they will take it too hard. Just be honest and kind with them, as you’ve always been.” The commander left then to organize the day’s training, and Bilbo sat in stunned silence. How honest had he really been with them, he wondered, if they thought he would make a good parent or even a good partner? He was hollow inside.

It wasn’t the proposals that called him away from the Rangers and back to Bag End. It was a letter, now two months late in getting to him because it had passed from Hamfast to the Bounders to a Ranger who had intended to join back up with Bilbo’s group sooner but had been forced to make a long detour to get a festering wound healed, and now he only had two weeks to get back to the Shire because Gandalf and Balin were coming! He hadn’t been home in a while, though he took short breaks now and then from the travelling life. All that moving took its toll, though it helped that he was eating better now than when he first joined. He never stayed in Bag End very long, though. He’d quickly begin to feel confined and emotional and itched to be on the move again, but this was different because now he felt sick for an entirely new reason. He had seen a few dwarrow in passing during his time with the Rangers as they patrolled the roads leading to Ered Luin, but he often made himself scarce while they talked. It hurt his heart to hear that deep, booming laughter and the muttered Khuzdul, and he certainly did not feel like getting recognized. Not that such a thing was likely, but Ori had written him that he had commissioned a great tapestry based on his sketches with the likenesses of all the company and had it hung in the great hall, so anything was possible.

Ori had sent him a copy of that sketch, drawn in painstaking detail, with one of the trade caravans. Wonderful lad. He’d known it would make Bilbo cry and he’d given it to him anyway, and Bilbo loved him for it. It went everywhere with him, carefully stowed in a watertight cylinder. It had seen some wear, but he could still make out their faces as they laughed around a campfire.

He hadn’t seen any of them since his return home after the battle. Letters were frequent and appreciated, but nothing made up for actually seeing one of his friends. He welcomed Balin and Gandalf with open arms. The wizard had tried to conceal his shock when he learned how Bilbo had been keeping busy, but he didn’t manage to duck his head quite quick enough. Bilbo didn’t care. Balin was here and even though it hurt to see him he wanted to know absolutely everything that had happened in the last seven years.

It was on the final night of their stay when, voice low with anticipation, Balin brought up his plans to retake Moria. And as he listened, his ring did something it never had before. It snickered, the sound oozing over him like hot, bubbling tar. Bilbo wanted to protest, to advise him not to go, but the words stuck in his throat. What could he say, after all? That his awful little ring sounded very smug about it, so he should forego five years of planning? No, that wouldn’t do. He fought down the urge to be sick and wished him luck and packed him some scones (okay, a lot of scones, he’d probably never want to see a scone again in his life) and hugged him goodbye, all the while trying to ignore the ring’s mocking laughter echoing in his ears. And as Balin walks away, turning back to wave now and then, Bilbo feels the something pulling taut slowly, promising grief.

Chapter Text

After Balin's new colony at Khazad-dûm’s communication with Erebor had been regular for almost a year, with ravens making the trip there and back twice a month carrying Ori’s reports, the tangled knot of worry in Bilbo’s heart caused by the ring’s dark laughter began to ease. He begins to think that maybe, just maybe, his awful little ring and the ever-unhelpful something that irked him more with each passing day didn’t know everything, that Balin and Ori and Oin would be alright and they would be heroes twice over for having reclaimed yet another fallen kingdom. Ori would finally be proud of himself for doing something without his brothers’ help –

He was fast asleep in his bed during one of his rare visits to Bag End when the ring woke him with a pleased hiss to tell him that Balin was dying, felled by an orcish archer. It crooned to Bilbo as Oin’s sight was blocked forever by a slimy tentacle that crushed him as easily as a child would a flower. When the ring whispered Ori’s name, he screamed and screamed so that he would not hear the details, his heart breaking all over again.

Three more of the Company lost, forever.

Well, not lost to the dwarves, who would remember them in their legends and songs and see them again in Mahal’s domain. But to simple hobbit friends, they were gone, and Bilbo’s trembling fingers traced and retraced Ori’s heartbreakingly young face on the sketch until he could hardly make the smudged ink out through his tears.

He spent three more years with the Rangers, though they could sense that he had changed, that the blackness which ate at him had taken a good chunk of his remaining light. Bilbo forced a smile for them and continued to fuss over their wounds and scold them for not wearing their warmer coats, but his words were quieter, as if they came from a great distance. They were good men, he thought. Perhaps even the best. But even though they were dear to him, he never quite let them become his family.

He knew better.

And when they began dying, he told himself that at least it didn’t hurt as badly. It couldn’t. He hadn’t let them in. He hadn’t. Had he?

Two catastrophes in two months, and twelve Rangers dead. One party ambushed by orcs and slaughtered, and the others surprised by a bunyip which would have been in hibernation if not for the abnormally long summer. The amorphous water demon had killed five, the three bathing and two of those on watch who tried to intervene despite all their training telling them not to. The commander had drilled it into them from the first day: never face a bunyip without the element of surprise and with anything less than twelve men. If it has someone, he had told them harshly, that person is already dead. If it killed someone, you do them no good by dying too. But Kelsr and Aen only hard the screams of their friends as they were swallowed by a gaping maw. And so they died too, and their Ranger friends had no bodies to bury, only effects to burn in a solemn ceremony and letters to mail to their loved ones. At times like this Bilbo found himself glad that most Rangers did not start families, or leave a family they’d begun to return to rangering. The shock of their loss must have been too much for Merric, who succumbed to a long-term illness a week later. The death of his second in command hit the commander much harder than any other. He’d practically raised the lad, but elves cannot heal lungs that have become paper-thin. Some things are beyond even Lord Elrond's skill.

Though they were as used to death as anyone could be, the northern Rangers were devastated. And as he struggled against the black pit of grief that gaped open to suck him in, Bilbo found the ring’s whispers beginning to dominate his mind until he could scarcely tell its words from his own thoughts. He found himself snapping at the others, unable to understand why he had a second later. A fourth of their number was dead and he wasn’t helping. Seeing the hurt and worry in their eyes as they watched him spiral convinced Bilbo that it was time to leave. He wanted to tell them all how sorry he was and that he wanted to be there for them but all he seemed able to do was hurt them. He didn’t trust himself to say everything he had to tell them without breaking down completely, and he was afraid of lashing out at them any more than he already had. So, he wrote them all letters, telling them everything he loved about each of them and the memories that he would treasure the most. He hugged them all goodbye and found himself alone.

Only, not completely alone. Rion followed him, unimpressed with his plan to break away from the group in the literal middle of nowhere. He tells Bilbo that they needn’t talk if he’d rather not, but that he isn’t going to let him go off by himself, certainly not when he’s this upset. Bilbo had no choice and he worried about Rion getting back safely when he’s hurting too. But he was grateful for the escort, for another living person around the campfire.

Bilbo was too much of a chicken to head west to the Blue Mountains or east to Erebor, so he headed home instead. Bilbo welcomed Rion to stay at Bag End as long as he likes, and the Ranger did stay a few days, mostly to make sure that he is not going to fall apart. Then bid him a warm farewell, promising to meet up with another group of Rangers as soon as possible since Bilbo is so concerned about him being alone. Rion seemed touched that Bilbo worries so much about him, and quietly urged him to worry about himself sometimes too.

Bilbo tried to get his head straight in the peaceful humdrum of the Shire, but it was no use. He couldn’t stay there. His heart ached to see his dwarves but he couldn’t imagine being around them while he was bleeding grief and anger. So, he bought a pony and headed south along the North-South Road. He passed through the ruins of Tharbad, the once-prosperous city of men that sat on the River Greyflood, and shuddered. It was not a dark place, per se, but it made his soul cry out to see what it had been reduced to after reading about its splendor in his books. This port city had once been a neighbor to a tribe of hobbits who had made their home nearby for almost five hundred years, supporting the city with their knack for farming. His kin had finally left just before the great plague of TA 1636 as the region grew dark and menacing.

Bilbo left it behind quickly, not wishing to spend a night near the somber ruins. He made his way through the Gap of Rohan. Disliking the frequency with which he passed other travelers that pestered him with questions or sized him up for possible robbery, he avoided the city of Edoras and detoured north to travel along the border of Fangorn Forest. He found its swaying trees oddly seductive, calling him near. The ring hissed at him whenever he got too close and Bilbo huffed in exasperation. Honestly, even fauntlings know now to go into Fangorn, though he was probably the only hobbit to ever get so close to it. The forest’s infamy did not stop the gardener in him from being fascinated by the ancient trees.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to see an Ent outside of his books? But Bilbo remembered the sickness that had gripped them all when they had travelled through the formerly green Greenwood and turned away from Fangorn and its mysteries. He did not fancy adding to the darkness that hung like a storm cloud over his mind, a shadow on his days.

He couldn’t resist heading east to see the Argonath that his northern Rangers spoke of with such reverence. He’d been meaning to visit the great statues ever since a friend in Rivendell had described them with a wistful longing in his voice. The imposing statues stand hundreds of feet tall, left hands outstretched in warning to all who would enter the land of Isildur, who defeated Sauron. The hobbit thought it was interesting that Isildur’s statue did not wear a ring on his hand or a chain around his neck for it to hang from. Ah well. He supposed that men were never ones to dwell on their heroes’ flaws. Elrond had spoken of Isildur once, in the deep quiet of early morning, and there was still a great pain in his eyes, even after three thousand years. “Men are weak,” he’d whispered. Bilbo considered that Isildur had probably been weak when he failed to destroy the One Ring, but he had just witnessed the death of hundreds of his men and his own father. Fresh grief does not lend itself to sound judgement. And Bilbo had learned the true strength of men in his time with the Dúnedain.

Perhaps, he thought, remembering the look in Elrond’s eyes, Isildur had hurt the elf lord not by being weak, but by failing his friend.

Bilbo made camp on the cliffs parallel to the great outstretched hand of Isildur’s brother, Anárion, and spent a couple days contemplating the time and engineering it must have taken to craft such a marvel.

And if his contemplation was interrupted for just a moment by the thought of Thorin holding him over a similar long, long drop … well. That was hardly worth further thought.

The more time he spent at the Argonath, the stranger he felt. The something was thrumming in the back of his mind, though it didn’t seem to be urging him away from the Argonath. Instead it seemed merely … unsettled, as if he isn’t supposed to be there. As if he is somehow defying the plan. Bilbo rolled his eyes at the thought. Well, if there is a plan, he thinks irritably, then it would be best if it made itself known now.

There is no reply from the voiceless thing inside his head. Typical.

Bilbo knew better than to go further east for he had heard disturbing tales about the marshes before Dagorlad. Even their colloquial name, the Dead Marshes, was off-putting, and he had no interest whatsoever in seeing what was so ominous about them. It did not sound like any kind of place for hobbits. The ring urged him south toward Minas Tirith, but the something objected rather strongly to that, yanking him north. He obeyed, irritated that no further directions are offered, only the warning. The ring seemed to sulk, but Bilbo had no interest in getting that close to Mordor anyway.

Bilbo considered following the Great River Anduin, knowing that it would bring him close to the mythic Lothlórien. But its proximity to the hateful Dol Guldur that Gandalf spoke of so reluctantly has him heading back toward Edoras. As he walked and walked and walked, he wonders if this all that he will do for the rest of his life until his back begins to ache and his knees give out, a lone hobbit wandering across Middle Earth in search of a future trial that he isn’t certain even exists.

Bilbo tries not to think about that bleak time in his life.

After seven months without seeing a familiar face, the travel-worn hobbit was surprised and delighted to find Gandalf in Edoras, though he was talking with another wizard. Arguing, really. The white-bearded man introduced as Saruman seemed irritated at the interruption and he was politely dismissive to the hobbit until he realized that this was in fact a hobbit, and so very far from home.

A hobbit who had spent enough time in the Wild to trust his instincts. So Bilbo does not dismiss the way that the fine hairs on the back of his neck rise when the wizard looks at him. He doesn’t like this man. At all. But Saruman seemed intrigued by him, enquiring about his presence in Edoras. He gave a noncommittal answer about looking for Gandalf, hoping to catch him before he is swept away again like a leaf on the wind. Saruman gave a brief chuckle at his flighty description of the grey wizard, but he was not deterred. Icy blue eyes seem to dig into Bilbo’s very soul, looking for a lie. His eyes remind the hobbit of a warg’s. Soulless, and cruel. Bilbo held his stare, the picture of bafflement that such an important wizard would be interested in him. Saruman didn’t seem to find whatever he was looking for and turned away to conclude his conversation with Gandalf. The wizard departed, and Bilbo watches him go for a long moment, deaf to Gandalf’s astonished questions.

Saruman. He’d remember the name.

Once Gandalf got over his initial shock, he expressed his happiness at seeing Bilbo again, though he certainly had not intended to find him here. Bilbo enquired about Gandalf’s recent travels, not wanting to discuss his own. (“Oh yes, Gandalf, I’ve just been all over the map. Why, you ask? The beehive in my skull is still buzzing and I’m determined to make it stop.” Yes, that would go over very well.)

They remained in the city another day before leaving. It seemed he really had found Gandalf in the nick of time, flighty thing that he is. Perhaps Gandalf would tell him someday what he was always so busy with. Gandalf suggested (though “suggested” is putting it mildly) that Bilbo accompany him back to Rivendell. Bilbo was willing enough. He was sick of all these new places that didn’t make him feel any different, and the elves of Imladris had always been good company. His Rangers often stopped there when a member was wounded beyond their abilities to heal, and Lord Elrond was always happy to provide food and shelter.

As they left the city, Bilbo was busy trying not to think of his Rangers or his dwarves when a piercing whistle, one he recognizes, split the air. Oh, bother. It’s as if they’d heard his thoughts.

Gandalf gave an unnecessarily complicated whistle in reply, noting the somewhat put-out look on Bilbo’s face. “What’s the matter, my friend?” the wizard asked, eyebrows raised. “Not keen to meet your southern counterparts?”

How could he say that they remind him of his dead friends? He has far too many dead friends.

It suddenly occurred to him why Gandalf is always a bit distant, a bit removed from everyone. Almost every friend he ever made would be dead now, by Bilbo’s reckoning. Bilbo felt a new respect for the wizard. He’d only lost (his parents, the boys he adored, the king he might have loved, his brave Rangers) a few people and he fell into ruins.

He realized that Gandalf is still waiting for an answer. “Men snore,” he replied, which is true. “And their cooking is rubbish,” he added, and the wizard chuckles. A young man on a horse soon appeared to lead them back to his camp where forty southern Rangers gave a hearty welcome to Gandalf (honestly, does he know everyone? That sounds exhausting). They stared curiously at Bilbo, and he’d wager that very few of them had ever seen a hobbit before. He felt a growing urge to slip on his ring. He’d worn it often in the recent months when avoiding orc patrols or roving goblins or simply bathing, remembering the bunyip that had eaten his friends. Wearing it tired his mind but kept him safe while traveling alone. Gandalf had been a welcome sight, but so much attention after so long alone was almost overwhelming.

Then someone cried, “Lads, that’s the north contingent’s hobbit!”

Apparently, he’d become something of a celebrity. Bother.

He was sure that he’d have a tide of questions to deal with as the only non-human ranger in the last four hundred years, but everyone quiets down and finds somewhere else to be when a somber woman takes a seat beside him. She possessed a strange, almost feline beauty that jarred with the rugged rangers she traveled with, but the quiver of arrows on her back and the callouses on her hands clearly indicated that she belonged here.

Of course Bilbo recognized her. Aen had shown him the small portrait in his locket half a million times. He’d have gladly looked at it half a million more if it meant Aen wasn’t ... If it hadn’t been for the bunyip. “Lady Illien, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Bilbo said gently.

Her eyes look old, like an elf’s. “And you, Bilbo Baggins. You were in so many of his letters.” The woman’s hand gripped his, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Do you think he knew that I love him?” Her voice was wrecked and small.

Oh no. Salt water stung his eyes as he gave her hand a comforting squeeze. Humans have such big hands, he feels rather like a child whenever he holds one. “Yes, milady. Yes, I do. Though you certainly made him work for it.”

She cracked a small smile at that, quickly brushing aside a few tears. “I – I worried, that he … he might have thought I was only toying with him –” A sob crawled up her throat and Bilbo quickly shook his head.

“No, milady. He spoke of you every day that I knew him, much to the others’ annoyance.” That got a small laugh. Just a little one, but a real laugh. “He always said how proud he was to have earned your affection, that he felt like the luckiest man in the world.”

Her shoulders seemed a bit lighter after that, though she still looked as though she’d be sobbing if not for the steely determination in her clenched fist and raised chin. “Thank you,” she said sincerely, and left to be alone.

Bilbo took a long minute to compose himself. Thinking of Aen made him think of them all.

He didn’t get to brood for long because two of the youngest Rangers he’d ever met were looking at him with big fauntlings eyes and asking him to tell them a story about the north. And thankfully, stories have always been his strong suit. It wasn’t long before others drift over to where he is sitting, leaning against trees or sharpening their knives or whittling arrows as they listen to his tale. He told them about the orc lord’s raiding party that his contingent had been tracking for three weeks when sheer chance provided his friend Kallan with a clear shot at the orc lord’s head as he stood on a rock to bellow at his followers. When he went down, the camp was thrown into disarray with some orcs shoving to get away and others demanding to know which of them had killed their great leader. With his ring on Bilbo could make out the sudden proclamations from orcs who thought that they should be the new leader, though it was easy enough to tell from the way they were squaring off and furiously beating their chests. The Rangers chuckled at that. After all, orcs have never been very smart, and the pandemonium provided plenty of time for arrows to find throats. By the time they had realized that the threat was not internal, their numbers were easily manageable. The commander had bought two barrels of rum from the nearest tavern, and the innkeeper sold them at significant discount after hearing what they were celebrating. Everyone, even the hobbit, got ridiculously drunk that night.

Recalling how happy his friends had been, and looking at the amused Rangers gathered around him, Bilbo felt the creeping darkness release its grip on some of his soul. He really had been alone too long.

Some of the southern Rangers were planning to go north to augment their counterpart’s reduced numbers. As Bilbo and Gandalf made their way to Rivendell they were accompanied by thirteen men and three women, including the flinty-eyed Lady Illien. Their journey was slower going than when Bilbo had traveled alone, because orc activity had spiked in the area around Isengard and they occasionally made detours to track the warg prints they found. As the Rangers crept up on an orc pack arguing over who would get to ride an unusual black and white warg, they found their work being done for them as the contestants tore each other apart. The Rangers waited until five bodies lay on the ground, then let their arrows fly. The victor never got the chance to enjoy his prize.

The southern Rangers seemed impressed by Bilbo, even knowing that he had been a Ranger for more than a decade. Two young Rangers, Meer and her brother Boren, seemed particularly fascinated by him. Bilbo often found himself walking or riding with one of them on either side of him. They each had light brown curly hair and warm brown eyes, though Boren was occasionally teased for growing his hair longer than his sister’s. Boren’s hair was the man’s one vanity. Meer was curious about what to expect from the north and was surprised to learn that there were no female rangers among his contingent, at least not in the time that he had been with them. She sighed and said that at least she had Rea and Illien with her to whip those northern boys into shape. Boren informed him in a stage whisper that Meer had overseen the training of more than twenty rangers, so all the lads back home were afraid of her. She sniffed delicately, her nose in the air, replying that she hardly had time for anyone so easily deterred.

Boren, to his surprise, wanted to know all about hobbits. When Bilbo asked why, he shrugged and said, “Well, shouldn’t we know about the people we’re protecting? I already know about dwarves and elves.”

Wincing at the mention of dwarves, he obliged the young Ranger, telling them about hobbit society and history before moving onto family trees. He tried to be as general as possible, expecting their interest to wane. But at the siblings’ encouragement he went into greater depth about hobbit behavior, made his case for why seven meals a day really was the superior way of organizing one’s diet, and told them stories that had been passed down through his family. They were good listeners, though they often asked clarifying questions about who was who and expressed their confusion over why Primrose Boffin was so very offended when Blanco Bracegirdle offered her a bouquet of amaryllis on their second chaperoned outing. Bilbo explained that amaryllis, while often taken to mean “splendid beauty,” can also mean “worth beyond beauty,” and Primrose had an unfortunately upturned nose that she was terribly self-conscious about, so she had taken his bouquet to mean “I am interested in you even though you are not beautiful.” It took Blanco five months to get Primrose to even speak to him again. Bilbo felt that while the Boffin side was where their daughter Lobelia got her stubborn streak, her persistence came entirely from Blanco Bracegirdle.

After that story nothing would do but that he teach them flower meanings, and by the time they reached Tharbad he was receiving multiple flowers a day for inspection, as the duo had gotten other Rangers in on their game. Of course it would be spring. Bilbo scolded them for picking so many if they weren’t going to do anything with them. After that, he was either being dragged away from the group to view flowers that were still in the earth, or flowers were being tucked into his coat pockets and behind his ears despite in protests. He once woke up to find a literal blanket of poppies draped over him. The camp had been holding in their laughter all morning waiting for his reaction, and promptly broke down when he let out a very long sigh and draped an arm over his eyes dramatically, declaring that he couldn’t live like this anymore.

He wasn’t as annoyed as he sometimes pretended, and everyone knew that. Their childish teasing was doing wonders for the inky sickness that had consumed him after he left the Rangers, and even though it never left him completely, he found that he truly enjoyed company again. Even Gandalf, who had been so concerned when he found him in Edoras, no longer looked at him with such worry.

And that meant that it was almost time to face his dwarves again.

As they followed the River Bruinen to Rivendell, Meer and Boren were brimming with excitement. Meer talked about how she was looking forward to putting the northern lads through their paces on their weapon skills. She carried a halberd, a lethal-looking spear and battle axe combination, and when Bilbo told her that he only knew one man among his Rangers who used a halberd, she merely said, “That will change.”

Her brother was eager to meet a man called Strider whom he hoped would be in Rivendell. Bilbo thought he might have heard the name in passing among his Rangers, but he had never met the man. He hoped for his new friend’s sake that the oddly-named fellow was in residence when they arrived.

Boren, it seemed, was doomed to disappointment. Lord Elrond was sorry to say that Strider was not present, as he had ventured into the Misty Mountains with Elladan and Elrohir, Lord Elrond’s twin sons and causes of his thousand-year headache. The lord of Imladris welcomed his guests, inviting them to stay as long as they needed. The long march had left many among them tired. They’d pushed themselves to reach the north as soon as possible, knowing their brothers were short on men. Lord Elrond sent falcons to seek out the northern contingent and report back with orders for the new recruits. Everyone fell into the plush elven beds with groans of ecstasy. Nothing beat a real bed after so long sleeping on the ground (or, in some cases, on each other. Bilbo wasn’t about to judge).

Bilbo had missed Rivendell, though he had avoided staying there long based on the reasonable assumption that the peaceful, sedentary life of the ancient elves would only aggravate the restless itch that urged him to keep moving if he stood still for too long. But there was one person that he would tolerate any restlessness to speak to: Erestor.

The taciturn librarian’s eyes lit up when Bilbo stepped into the library. “Melon nin! It is wonderful to see you again.”

“As it is for me to see you,” Bilbo replied in Elvish, happy to use the language again. He always feared that he’d grow rusty. He set a few books and scrolls on one of the desks laden with papers after receiving a nod of permission. The elf’s eyes were bright as he investigated his presents. Bilbo stifled a grin. He’s like a cat with a new toy, Bilbo thought, watching as slender hands delicately flipped through the first tome. Erestor gasped.

“Is this truly an account of King Brego’s construction of the catacombs beneath Edoras? My dear Bilbo, did you have to steal it?” the delighted elf cried.

Bilbo pouted. “Steal books? Never. Useless gems, certainly, but never books.”

Erestor noticed the crease forming in his brow at the thought of his first attempt at burglary and quickly hugged his smaller friend, startling an “eep!” out of him. “You knew how long I had been searching for books on early Edorian architecture, you wonderful hobbit!”

Bilbo’s smile was bright, his previous thoughts forgotten. “Why don’t you go look at your other presents before thanking me?”

Erestor grew still at the reminder of additional texts and released his friend, flipping quickly through the other tome and browsing the scrolls. He let out some very undignified noises before looking around quickly to ensure that no one, especially not Elrond, had heard them. “Oh, you are the best of friends, truly! These poems had been thought lost! Wherever could you have found a first rendition of the “Courtship of Emeldir and Barahir?” Unless … no.” His eyes were wide.

Bilbo couldn’t resist feigning nonchalance as he rocked on the balls of his feet. “Well, your research did happen to mention a secret door set into Anárion’s hand…”

“You went to the ARGONATH?” Elves, as a rule, do not shout, and Erestor did not do so now, but he came mighty close. Were he a hobbit tween and not an immortal elf, he would be pulling out his own hair in distress. He looked tempted to do so anyway.

“I was sightseeing,” Bilbo replied. then grinned. “And I’m sorry to break it to you, but I climbed out on that stone hand for nothing. The entrance was set into folds of his robe. I had to rappel down about thirty feet once I found the door. It’s a good thing you were right about the passphrase!”

Erestor looked torn between horror, awe and gratitude. After a long moment of standing with his mouth hanging open, he sank into one of the plush chairs with a rueful laugh. “That will teach me to tell you about rumored caches in incredibly dangerous places.” Erestor hadn’t left Rivendell in five hundred years. He couldn’t bear to be away from his books, or his lord, whom he was convinced would be lost without him, a sentiment Bilbo secretly agreed with. Brilliant, yes, but Elrond had never been and would never be organized. His secluded lifestyle made the librarian appreciate his few friends’ efforts to bring him new books for his collection more than he would any other type of treasure. Erestor leaned forward to grasp Bilbo’s hands in his own, eyes warm. “I am indebted to you as ever. One day I shall have to find a way to repay you.”

The hobbit smirked. “Well you can start by telling me what it says. I can’t read Ancient Elvish, you know.”

The librarian barked a laugh and opened the book to begin his translation, though he paused and cast a suspicious eye over the hobbit. “What else did you find in that secret room, Bilbo Baggins?”

He rested his chin on his folded hands, smiling coyly. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it? I will offer this much, though: I found about twenty pounds of dust. I was sneezing for a week! I doubt my handkerchiefs will ever be the same after such abuse.”

On the third day after their arrival in Rivendell, Gandalf had to leave again, making his way further north to “check on something.” Before he made it out the door, Erestor popped his head out from the library and called, “Don’t you forget my books this time, wizard, or I’ll have your hat!”

Gandalf gave a somber nod that failed to hide his smile and bowed to Erestor. “A worthy threat, Master of Learning.”

“Save your flattery and get me my books. And don’t die,” he snapped, his head vanishing back into his world of books.

“Ahh, Erestor,” the wizard said drily.

“Excuse you, he’s a delight,” Bilbo retorted, crossing his arms. Erestor is the single most interesting person he’s ever met, and he would tolerate no slight against him.

Gandalf apologized with twinkling eyes and departs. He does not see the wizard again for quite some time.

His stay in Rivendell was pleasant, especially form his sore tailbone after all that riding, though he knew that the day was fast approaching when the commander of the northern Rangers and six others would arrive to collect their new brothers and sisters. Surprisingly, he didn’t dread seeing them. He was looking forward to the opportunity to offer them a proper apology. No, what he was dreading was breaking the news to his new friends that he would not be going north with them, but rather east to the Lonely Mountain. The very thought made his hands shake. If Bilbo was honest with himself, he wasn’t altogether certain that he could do it, that he could see that place again. But for his dwarves, he would try.

Boren and Meer were devastated when he told them. “But – but we thought you were coming with us! That you were going to be a Ranger again! We’re counting on you to guide us, and warn us who not to play cards with, and-and tell us who not to sleep next to because they have gas! We’ll be lost without you!” Boren wailed.

His sister was not nearly so dramatic. “Why do you have to do this now? Surely there’s a better time to visit your dwarves.” Meer’s lips were pursed in a way that would make lesser mortals cower. Bilbo suspected that she didn’t realize that she had her Training Master face on. While they were on the road, Bilbo had witnessed that look send a couple men two decades her senior scrambling to obey her instructions. She’d turned to Bilbo with a wink, explaining that’d she picked up that look from her own commander as a woman just past her maturity.

Bilbo sighed and reached for their hands. They sat down again, having gotten up to pace and exclaim when he broke the news. “Why do I want to do this now? Because I have been unable to until now. I’m still not sure that I can make myself go all the way. But now, I am able to try.” He squeezed their hands. “Because of you two.”

Their eyes were wide and startled. “Us?”

He smiled at them. “Yes. You wonderful kids have helped me more than you can imagine. When I left the north, I felt like all I could offer other people was pain and disappointment. But I don’t believe that anymore. Because of you.”

Boren looked as though he might cry. Meer was studying Bilbo as she took her brother’s spare hand. “You never told us you felt so poorly, Bilbo.” They’d guessed that their friend was dealing with some difficulty, but they had never realized that it had affected him so deeply. She wondered if it was like the sadness in her mother, the one that made her dig her sewing needle into her thigh when she thought no one was looking. As a child, she’d thought that only the weak would let their sadness rule them. But as she grew older and spent more time with healers, Meer came to understand that there were some kinds of illness that didn’t make you cough or cause a knot to form in your body where there shouldn’t be one. Instead they formed knots in your mind or your heart, and they could befall anyone, weak or strong. And she harbored no doubts about her small friend’s strength.

“All that matters is that I am feeling better, dear ones. And I have you to thank for that. I have no doubt that you two will find happiness among the northern Rangers. But my path lies elsewhere. If fate is willing, I will see you again within a year.”

“A year?!” Boren looked ready to throw something. But his sister shushed him and asked that Bilbo give them a little while to speak alone. He obliged, glad that they seemed more upset with the situation than cross with him. He was sorry to be leaving them, but Boren had hobbits to meet and Meer had Rangers to train.

In retrospect, he should have expected the result. When they came down for dinner, calm and smiling, he should have noticed the secret hiding in their eyes. But he was too relieved that they had forgiven him for leaving, and he was determined to make the most of the time they had left.

When the commander arrived three days later on the back of his old warhorse Medros, he bellowed to the elven watch, “I heard tell that you have a hobbit of mine! Present him forthwith, or there will be war!”

Bilbo grinned at him from his perch above the gates, his lingering anxiety about seeing his friends melting away. “Stay your hand, oh warrior! I am here.” He climbed down to join them, the elven guards chuckling as he passed them.

A cheer went up among the men and they began to dismount. Rion reached him first, which Kallan complained was both unfair and unreasonable seeing as he had the shortest legs, but Bilbo made sure to hug him second, which stopped Kallan’s grumbling. They had a well-established rule for hugging: never lift the hobbit off the ground more than an inch. He does not like it. Despite his excitement, Kallan managed to keep to the one-inch mark, though Bilbo was having trouble breathing. Chuckling at their antics, the commander clapped a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder and ordered Kallan to stop before their hobbit expired, because honestly, where would they find another one like him? “It is good to see you, Bilbo Baggins. And I hear that your travels have been fruitful. You have found me some new, what is your word again, “fauntlings” to order about!”

Bilbo sucked in air gratefully, waving his hand toward the courtyard. “You may,” he wheezed, “find some of them harder to boss around than you expect. Take a look, and do try not to scare them on their first day.”

“Ah, but there is no time like the present! RANGERS OF THE SOUTH, FALL IN!” His voice was like thunder, and even those he’d brought with him jumped at the sound. Bilbo shook his head fondly and noticed Rion still beside him, watching him with somber green eyes.

“What?” Did he have some of this morning’s pudding on his nose? He pretended to scratch it in order to check.

“You seem better, brother. Happier,” Rion finally said, sounding very glad, and more than a little relieved. The hobbit must have painted a pretty grim picture when they last spoke.

Bilbo shrugged and gestured for him to follow. “I am. And I’ve made some good friends. But I somehow doubt you will thank me for these two, no matter how much they have helped me.”

Bilbo and Rion enter the courtyard to find fourteen Rangers lined up and standing at attention. Only fourteen. Confound it! “Where are they?” Bilbo hissed at Lady Illien. They were going to make a bad impression on their very first day!

She smirked, gesturing with her chin. Her eyes were livelier than they had been in Rohan. The change of scenery had been good to her. Bilbo looked in the direction she’d indicated and swore, making several of the nearby Rangers snicker. It seemed that he was the last to know about this mischief.

Boren gave him a cheeky wave from his place beside his sister. She was talking to the commander, and neither were dressed for travel. As he stalked toward them, he heard her saying, “-and of course it would be irresponsible of us to abandon such a valuable asset to the northern contingent. Anything could befall him in the Misty Mountains. Or worse, his old friends on the other side may decide to keep him!” She stood in perfect salute, though her smug smile detracted from the image of propriety. “We would be honored to keep Master Baggins safe and represent the interests of those among the Rangers who would see him home in a timely fashion, with your permission.”

Bilbo ground his teeth at the good-natured laughter around him. The commander raised his single eyebrow at the sulking hobbit. “The girl makes a good case. Of course, it’s your choice at the end of the day, Bilbo, but really, just look at those faces. How can you say no?”

He stared the troublesome siblings down for a long minute, and they stared right back, Meer undaunted and Boren pleading. Finally, Bilbo threw his hands up into the air in defeat. “Fine! Do as you will. But we will have words later, count on that!” He stormed off to find something to eat, pretending not to hear the twin cries of “yes!” behind him. “They’ll be your problem soon enough, commander!” he called. “Just wait, you’ll have wished we all got eaten by a troll once I bring them back. You’re only delaying an inevitable suffering.”

The southern Rangers nodded sagely. They knew well what manner of suffering Meer could and would inflict.

And even though he did have some very stern words for them later, he couldn’t help feeling glad to have them along. He’d been miserable the first time he made the journey over the mountains and into Mirkwood. Perhaps this time would be more pleasant. He shuddered at the thought of Gollum running rampant through the Misty Mountains seeking his “precious.” Bilbo’s hand went reflexively to the ring, and that touch sent a calming warmth through him. No one was going to take it from him. He’d kill them first.

The thought shocked him. He hadn’t been certain what it meant to Gollum when he picked it up, only that his hand seemed to reach toward it without conscious thought. Once his fingertips brushed smooth gold, he felt both wrong and incredibly right, and the hum in his mind rose like a tidal wave. When he’d seen how distraught Gollum was, he’d actually felt bad about it, though he could sense that handing it over would not go well. Bilbo had been too focused on running for his life to comprehend the hot wave of possessiveness that went through him when he considered returning the ring to its murderous owner, and he had spared Gollum’s life when he could have easily killed him. Bilbo certainly didn’t intend to kill anyone over it now. He drew his fingers away from the ring, disconcerted, and tried to put it out of his mind. He was more than willing to kill for his friends, but his ring? Bilbo remembered how smug it had sounded when it told him about … about Moria. No, he wouldn’t kill anyone over it. It should be grateful he’d kept it at all instead of casting it into the nearest fire.

The ring was uncommonly silent while they made their way over the Misty Mountains, careful to avoid the path that his company had taken before, starting their climb further south where a pass linked up with the Old Forest Road. It certainly helped when one had Lord Elrond’s unbegrudging advice. It was a far easier trek, if climbing mountains can ever be considered easy. Though it promised to take them an extra ten days to reach Lake Town, this path had no stone giants, no goblin kings, and no horrifying creatures living in dark caves. If only Thorin hadn’t left his quest until the last minute, they could have taken this slower, safer route! But to be fair, Bilbo understood that they had only discovered the existence of a deadline when Lord Elrond read the map.

He spent some time thinking about their mad rush to reach the mountain before Durin’s Day and how much better things might have gone if they’d had more time. Thorin might have truly seen the suffering of the people of Lake Town, been able to put human faces to their tragedy. They could have formed a real plan for dealing with the possibility of Smaug being alive rather than the sheer brilliance of “let’s send a hobbit down there to find one jewel among millions in order to summon an army of dwarves that don’t have any better chance of defeating it than the last army did.” Kili might have healed in time to join them, and perhaps if Bard had seen the honest goodness in the princes’ hearts, he might have given Kili the black arrow, that Smaug might be brought down before ever being unleashed on Lake Town. Maybe, always maybe. His thoughts turned to the something again. He hadn’t felt it react to anything since Saruman, and that had been a small reaction easily eclipsed by his own immediate dislike of the wizard. But as Bilbo walked, he wondered if he might be able to improve the chances for success at, well, whatever the something finally deigned to become, if he could find it before it found him. Apparently, he’d waited fifty years for a dwarf king to decide to retake a mountain, and they’d cut it awfully close. If he could find it early, then maybe he would have the advantage.

It was endlessly frustrating, though. Wondering what it would be. Another dragon perhaps? Something extremely valuable and well-protected he had to steal? Some long, involved quest to defeat a great enemy? He snorted. Suppose he was only a stepping stone in someone else’s destiny, someone that he had to meet at just the right time? He would have felt more put-out by the idea if he wasn’t so fascinated by the thought of someone else out there with the something buzzing in the back of their mind, someone he could talk to about it.

Bilbo was surprised to find four elves at the entrance to Mirkwood. He was almost willing to believe that they were simply the guards stationed at that entrance now that the Old Forest Road was in frequent use again, but a familiar face brought dealt that thought an early death.

He fumed mutinously. Elves and men, conspiring together to make his journey as companionable as possible! “Hail, Prince Legolas!” he called, his irritation obvious.

The elf grinned. “Welcome, melon nin! I see that my Lord Elrond did not tell you that you would have an escort.”

Bilbo rolled his eyes. “It seems no one tells me much of anything, even when it involves me directly.” He shook the elf’s hand, appreciating that Legolas crouched to his level without any indication of mockery. Finally, someone who understands how ridiculously tall they are. “Do you mean to accompany me all the way to -” He stopped. Bilbo still wasn’t positive that he wanted to see the Lonely Mountain. Memories of gold-glazed eyes searching for a pretty rock, of a single angry fist that was the only thing between him and a very long drop, of a dragon that told him he would leave him alive to watch Lake Town burn - “to the Long Lake?” he finished, his throat dry.

Though the prince looked concerned, he did not ask about Bilbo’s hesitation, which the hobbit was grateful for. “Yes, I could certainly use an excuse to get out of the throne room. There are ambassadors visiting from Lothlórien. They have daughters.” He shuddered, and Bilbo nodded sympathetically. His own aunts had tried for many years to set him up with an eligible bachelor or bachelorette, only stopping when his forays into the wide world made him unmarriable. Bilbo’s opinion of the Elven King improved when Legolas said, a grateful smile on his face, “And Father gave me something to go bother King Dain about, of course.”

“Of course,” he replied. He liked Legolas. A bit intense, even for an elf, but a good sort overall. “These are my travelling companions, Ranger Boren and Ranger Training Master Meer. Like you, they were not supposed to come along, but what is a hobbit to do about Big Folk and their stubbornness?”

Meer got on alright with Legolas, though Boren put his foot in his mouth almost immediately by asking if he had the wrong woods because they were looking for the Green Wood. Bilbo had a long talk with him about how easy it was to offend people.

Two days into their walk, Bilbo quietly asked about Tauriel. The prince stiffened, and his guards dropped back. Eventually he whispered, his voice rough, “We did all we could for her.”

It was as he’d feared. She’d faded. He could only imagine how hard that must have been for the prince to watch. Bilbo instinctively reached over to squeeze his hand, though he wondered a moment later if he shouldn’t have. Legolas looked surprised, his eyes glassy with unshed tears, but he squeezed back and held on tightly for a long moment. He let go. They didn’t speak of Tauriel again.

The closer he gets to the Lonely Mountain, the harder it became to breathe. He couldn’t sleep, plagued by nightmares of fire and death and screaming. His head throbbed and his stomach was in knots. He was sweating more than he ought to since the forest is perfectly cool. His pace slowed, and no one mentions it, merely matches him. They are all trying to distract him but he – he can’t, he really can’t and he was a fool for thinking that he could, that he – that –

When he retches for the fifth time, spitting out what little he has managed to keep down, Meer drew him over to sit beside her. She cupped his face to make sure that he was seeing her. “Bilbo. We can stop. You need to stop. We -” Tears beaded in her eyes. “We love you. And you’re hurting yourself. Please, please stop. Please.”

The pleading is what does it. He nodded, hating himself, and she threw her arms around him in relief. In a business-like tone, she called for the others to make camp. He felt pathetic. Honestly, he survived the mountain once. So why can’t he just - why can’t he?

His friends were pressing soft kisses to his hair and telling him that it is alright, that no one thinks any less of him. They wrapped their arms around him and reminded him that he never said that he would go all the way, only that he would try. And Bilbo knows that they are right, but he’s done so much in the last thirteen years. Why can’t he do this one thing?

When he’s stopped crying, Legolas tentatively offered to send a raven to the mountain. He could have Bilbo’s friends meet him here. Yes. That sounds … that’s better. He thinks he can do that. Bilbo nodded slowly. Then Legolas asked who to send for.

He doesn’t think he can face them all at once. The gaps in their number would be all too obvious. “Would you send for Master Bofur, a-at first?”

Legolas is kind. “Of course, melon nin.”

“And – didn’t you – you have to go, don’t you? I mean, you have that message for Dain, and I don’t want to keep you –”

“Bilbo,” the elf said gently, kneeling in front of him. And isn’t that a fine way to be seen by a prince, all red-faced and dripping snot? His proper Baggins cousins would be aghast, but Legolas didn’t seem to mind. “The message is easy to deliver, it needn’t be me. And I would not leave you unprotected in this forest, despite our efforts to make it safer. You are our guest.” Hesitantly, he took one of Bilbo’s hands as the hobbit had before. “I will go if it is easier for you, of course. But I would stay, if you allow it.”

Bilbo nodded because he can’t talk anymore, his throat was closing up. Why was everyone so horribly sincere, and why wouldn’t his tear ducts just stop already? He didn’t want Legolas to go, not really. The elf squeezed his hand and they sat there for a minute before he rises to his full ridiculous height and begins whistling for a raven. When one arrived to take his message, Bilbo felt the awful churning in his gut ease just a bit. Bofur would know what to do, what to say. Bofur was his greatest friend. Or at least, he was one of them, Bilbo thought with a smile, looking at the two Rangers dozing against him and thinking of Rion and Kallan who probably had their hands full with the new recruits.

That night, he managed to sleep without dreaming. He absently wondered if some herb was slipped into his soup bowl, but if one was, he hardly cared. For the first time in days his head did not ache so horribly. Two of the elven guards departed quietly the next morning, and they returned the following afternoon with a familiar face.

“Bofur!” he cried, slipping out of his spot under the blanket draped over him and his Rangers.

The miner’s smile could rival the sun. “Bilbo!” The hobbit nearly knocks him off his feet when he reaches him, and Bofur hugs hard enough that his bones creak. He’d forgotten how dwarves hug. They finally pull apart, laughing and crying, only to hug again and make their way over to the fire with Bofur’s arm tight around his shoulders and his own arm slung around his waist. After wiping away his tears, Bilbo introduced his old friend to the Rangers, smiling brighter than he had in weeks. They were friendly and polite, but the siblings quickly drifted away to give Bilbo some time alone.

“Well, you sure are a sight for these sore eyes. And what’s this I hear about you joining up with menfolk to patrol the Wild and keep all us gentlefolk safe at night?” Bilbo shoved him in retaliation, making him chortle. “Ah, I’m only teasing. But really, lad, how’d that happen?” Seeing Bilbo freeze up, he seamlessly changed the subject. “Did you know Bombur had three more pebbles while you’ve been off Rangering? Three! He already had five. Some are starting to call him greedy. They never tell you that being an uncle is a full-time gig. I helped Bifur with the toymaking before, but I mainly just make them for my brother’s pebbles these days. Which isn’t to say I’m out of practice, only that I don’t always find myself with the time and energy to make them quite as often as I’d like, between the new mines I’m overseeing and reforming the miners’ union. But you see, the lads got ahold of a wee warhammer and managed to do a number on most of the toy collection – just practicing like, they meant no harm – and now I feel an immense pressure to recreate them, only the thing is that I can hardly remember what they all looked like! And them little pieces they’re in aren’t much for jogging memories. The littles try to tell me what they looked like but, well, you know littles, it ended up being a lot of comments about how much they liked them – right touched, I was – and not much about the actual, ah, appearance.”

Bofur kept talking, pausing now and then to search for any indication that he should stop, but Bilbo just nods, grateful, so glad to see him, to hear him, to not be talking about death and darkness and how lost he’d been but about life and children and shenanigans. Bofur filled the hobbit in on the Company (the other seven were still alive and in good health, thank the Mother), and Bilbo could tell that Bofur was skating over the sadder bits but that was just fine with him. Occasionally he asks questions and Bofur’s smile gets just a bit wider because he’s relieved that Bilbo can handle talking. Bofur stopped now and then for a sip of water or ale to wet his throat but he didn’t seem to mind even when his voice began to get hoarse.

Finally, Bilbo felt his throat unstick and managed to whisper, almost too quiet, “I cannot face the mountain.” And he hates himself for it.

“Well it certainly must have made a lousy first impression! Far more comely now, I promise you. I dug out some marvelous rubies last month! Big as eagles’ eggs. They were set into the braids of the statue of Thrain that now stands in the great hall. The markets are bustling and there’s often a song in the air. It is no longer a place of darkness and rubble,” Bofur cajoled, gently bumping him.

His eyes burned with salt water again, and he felt disgusted with himself. Some Ranger you are, Bilbo Baggins, he thought bitterly. “Whenever I take a step closer, I – I’m sick, I – It’s ridiculous and I’ve – I’ve tried –”

“Say no more, laddie.” Bofur understood, as Bilbo knew he would. The miner rested his forehead against Bilbo’s, a gentle pressure that helped ground him. He may not have figured out much about the secretive dwarves, but he knew that this kinder version of the skull-knocking greeting was normally reserved for kin, an expression of care and respect. Bofur smelled like pipe smoke and honey, probably from some sweet that Bombur had cooked up and packed for him. “Much of the evil you saw in your life, you saw there.”

Was it that simple? Bilbo didn’t know.

They passed the next day in a similar fashion, chatting about the new mines Bofur had opened up and the restoration of Dale while Bilbo told him a few stories about his own travels. Bofur tugged his mustache as he listened. “It sounds like they’ve been good to you, these Rangers.”

He nodded, looking over at where the siblings argued with Legolas and one of his companions about the benefits of crossbows vs longbows. Boren’s bangs needed to be cut, they were getting in his eyes again already. Bilbo couldn’t help but smile. “They have been. I haven’t always been good to them, but they are good company, good men.”

“Haven’t convinced any others among your folk to follow you into the Rangerin’ life? A handsome lass or lad, perhaps?” His tone was light, but Bilbo heard the real question behind it.

“No, I imagine that I will live out my days as a bachelor. I’m far too busy for anything romantic.”

Bofur nodded, trying not to look sad for his friend.

Nori and Dori arrived a few days later and Bofur reluctantly leaves after one more long, emotional hug. Nori had a shiner from a recent fight that he claims to have won, and Dori was wearing an elaborately woven green and gold cloak that he made by hand. Both wore mourning beads and their eyes were haunted, though they are genuinely happy to see Bilbo and he passes a few lovely days with them. Legolas’s suggestion was a good one, and Bilbo was doing pretty well with handling his dwarves in small doses. Dori fussed over his weight and demanded to know if he’s been taking care of himself while Nori asks skillfully-worded questions about Imladris and the forest elves, gathering information and relaxing when he discovers no new aggression is imminent from the elves. Bilbo thought that it must be exhausting running a kingdom’s intelligence network, though Nori calls it “the most honest work I’ve ever enjoyed” and Bilbo can tell that he really does find it rewarding.

He honestly hadn’t expected Dwalin to come, especially after hearing how closely he guards Dain, refusing to let another king fall on his watch. But the burly dwarf was surprisingly gentle when he hugged the hobbit and Bilbo found himself opening up to him in ways he hadn’t with the others. Not because Dwalin asks, but because there is a measure of shared pain and survivor’s guilt that he did not sense from the others. Bilbo was especially surprised when Dwalin shares a few of his own feelings (weak, couldn’t save them, miss them every day, I respect and serve him but he’ll never be Thorin, you know?). Dwalin seemed surprised at the words that escaped his mouth without his permission. But they moved on to his never-ending task of getting the guards he commands up to his own high standards. Meer heard them talking and joins in, and the two ended up sharing advice and arguing the benefits of certain training tactics. On the day that Gloin arrives with his son, Dwalin gave the hobbit an unreadable look and said, “Those boys loved you. And I know the line of Durin can be difficult, but I think you’d have made him happy.” He knocked his head against Bilbo’s with more force than the hobbit would have liked, and Bilbo spent several minutes dazed, though whether the headbutt or the unexpected words were more to blame, he did not know.

Gloin was doing well, and seemed the least haunted among them. He was thrilled to see the hobbit and regaled him of stories about his family, proudly presenting his son with hair as red as a bonfire. Gimli is surprisingly open for a member of such a secretive race, his emotions easily read on his face. Bilbo finds his curiosity about the world heartening, and he has an inkling (which may or may not have something to do with the slight tugging at the back of his mind) that this young dwarf will see much of the world, in time.

Bifur and Bombur are the last, and Bofur cannot help himself from returning with them, a crooked grin on his face. He didn’t even have the heart to protest when Bombur and Bifur’s exuberant hugs lift him much too high off the ground. He shared recipes with Bombur and enjoyed watching him shudder when he tells him about Ranger cooking. Bifur told Bilbo a long story that Bofur translated from where he sat snug beside his friend, a story about a legendary dwarf who shared a deep love with a nondwarf who died shortly after their union. This legendary dwarf, Belnor, mourned his love until his eventual death, succumbing to the wounds he’d suffered while killing a Cherufe with a taste for dwarf flesh, a towering demon who made its home in the molten core of a volcano that a colony of dwarves mined the slopes of for precious ore. Bifur said that the legend gives clear indications that Belnor’s lover was neither human nor elf, that his love was shorter than him. Bifur said that the lovely Fiera may have been a hobbit, whom he met during the Wandering Days before hobbits settled in the Shire. Bilbo was fascinated and asked how Bifur came across this particular account of Belnor’s legend. The mad dwarf’s eyes grew soft and he replied that Ori found a tattered record of the tale in Erebor’s library and had been very excited about the discovery. Bilbo felt his heart melting into a puddle as he hugged Bifur close, thanking him for the story, for the image of Ori bent over the ancient text, tongue between his teeth as he focused, his young eyes bright with enthusiasm. It’s a new pain that he is happy to carry, a memory of his friend to treasure.

He said his farewells to his dwarves and was surprised while packing up to encounter Bard, the new King of Dale, arriving at their camp, his horse slick with sweat. Bard was relieved to find that they have not left yet and had ridden hard to catch them once he finally managed to escape duties. Legolas sheepishly admitted that he told the man about Bilbo’s arrival, as Bard had often expressed his wish to see the brave hobbit who would have saved his people from a war with dwarves one more time. Bilbo was touched and welcomed him warmly, though when he attempts to bow the man shocks him by kneeling before him and naming him a True Friend of the kingdom of Dale. And as such, Bard said with a twinkle in his tired eyes, he should bow to no man among them, even their leader. His Rangers and the elven prince beamed at the overwhelmed hobbit, and Bard took pity on him, relaxing into an easy conversation about his children and the rebuilding of Dale. Bilbo told him about the many men and women that he has encountered in his travels and remarked that he would always count Bard among the best of them. Their visit was somewhat rushed because Bard had pressing responsibilities, but the hug he gave Bilbo upon leaving was one of the fiercest he’d ever received. “You are a most admirable person, Bilbo Baggins, and perhaps the most loyal I will ever meet. I sincerely hope that you find happiness.”

After Legolas promised that no more unexpected visitors would arrive and that his father understood if Bilbo does not want to stop by the elven court (enough, his heart cried, no more), the hobbit made his way out of the Green Wood, bidding Legolas a warm farewell. Bilbo’s taxed heart thanked him for the decreased excitement. His Rangers had been patient while he visited with the dwarves, but he could tell that they were eager to return home and were more than a little smug at being able to return with him. They made good time over the mountains. The group encountered a small band of goblins but Meer’s wicked halberd and the arrows loosed by Boren and Bilbo made quick work of them. Bilbo was looking forward to relaxing for a spell in Imladris before he leaves with his friends to rejoin the Rangers.

Then Elrond met him at the gates of Rivendell. The elven lord’s voice is achingly sympathetic as he offers Bilbo a letter from the Shire’s Thain.

And he – shattered.

The cousins that he loves more than any others were dead, drowned together in the Brandywine, and their heartbreakingly young son is an orphan. He’d avoided spending much time with Primula and Drogo in the last fourteen years because their happiness and easy love cut at something in him, made the dark sickness rise. And now they were dead. Grief swallowed him whole.

Large, gentle hands were shaking him, and how had he ended up kneeling with his hands clutching at his closing wind pipe? He was scarcely able to breathe and scarcely able to care about ever breathing again, and Bilbo was dimly aware of worried questions and Elrond giving orders. But he couldn’t make out anything over the rising crescendo of the humming, the near-singing inside his head, so loud and clear that his thoughts scattered like marbles. It had only been like that once before, when he found the ring. He slipped gratefully into the waiting nothingness of Elrond’s sleep tonic with one last brutal thought.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” he wanted to scream at the something. “Was this what you wanted?”

That was the last he’d heard from the damned something in three years. Three long, angry years of charging out into the world, daring the something to stop him. He’d been waiting seventeen years for the other shoe to drop, for the something to finally be resolved. Bilbo was under no illusions that it would resolve itself into something pleasant. It wouldn’t be finding a potential life mate whom he’d get to know for longer than a scant year before he lay dead on frozen, bloody earth. It wouldn’t even be the possible adoption of a sweet boy with wide, sad eyes, an idea his mind tumbled with anxiety over. No, this would be something violent, Bilbo somehow knew. It would need both hands, a fit form and a willing heart.

Well, his heart was angry. Angry would have to do.

But the something refused to let itself be known and then he was marching out of his smial with a determined stride and an empty pocket and the something suddenly collapsed like a cut wire. The thing that had held him for so long was … gone.

The something was quiet, neither taut nor loose, utterly silent. It was an unfeeling puddle of string at the bottom of his mind, unsure what to make of itself now that it was untethered. Bilbo urged it to find a second life as a snake and slither off to bother someone more qualified for the stressful lifestyles that the Fated and the mad tend to lead. He still wasn’t sure which one he was.

It occurred to him yet again that he probably was mad, but he had more pressing concerns. Like making camp. And SLEEP. Yes, sleep sounded good.

And somewhere behind him in the nigh-undisturbable peace of Hobbiton, the One Ring was screaming. And no one in that quiet, content land could hear it.

Chapter Text

Sleep didn’t fix much of the turmoil that yesterday had wrought, but Bilbo felt steadier on his feet than he had while blearily making camp. The night before, he’d been able to do little more than unsaddle Buttercup, unfurl his bedroll, and crawl into it. This morning he took care to brush his steadfast companion, who seemed unconvinced that he was truly well. He didn’t bother putting up a cheerful front. That was the nicest thing about horses. They didn’t hold you accountable for not smiling.

“If hobbits were more like horses,” he mused aloud, working a tangle out of her mane with nimble fingers, “perhaps it would not be so difficult to be home.”

Buttercup snorted in agreement, leaning into his touch as he rubbed her nose.

Bilbo managed to choke down some breakfast even though his stomach was still in knots from yesterday, and he savored the taste of a nutty sweet roll he’d baked before leaving home. He brushed the remaining sugar from his fingers before taking Buttercup’s reins in hand and continuing toward Rivendell. Though he still felt as though the ground had been pulled out from under him, Bilbo didn’t care to linger. Instead, he retrieved his walking stick from the pony’s back for added support, because there were no Rangers present to tease him about becoming a “frail old man.” Kallan had cheekily suggested they carry him if he needed the support, attempting to scoop the hobbit up into his arms. He’d found out the hard way that Meer had trained Bilbo to use the quarterstaff and that the woman had the brilliant idea to hollow out the ornate cap and fill it with lead. Rion had nearly cracked a rib laughing. The young Dúnedain was sore for a week and eyed the walking stick with great trepidation. Meer had looked like a strutting rooster puffed up with pride.

They were such good kids, and he treasured them. He only wished that they were enough to make him feel comfortable. His itch to be forever moving was slowly driving him insane.

In the last few years he’d taken it upon himself to become the primary navigator among the northern Ranger contingent. Some evenings, while others drank and sang and bickered, his eyes roved hungrily over detailed maps, praying that the next destination would finally quench his maddening hunger to keep moving. His Rangers moved camps more often than they used to (and usually sooner than they’d like to) at his … well. Not urging. Urging is done with words. Instead, as the days of staying still dragged on, Bilbo fidgeted (and fought to hide it), rocked uneasily on the balls of his feet (until he caught himself doing it), and took every opportunity to scout (even when an area was as secure as it could possibly be) until the one-eyed commander would abruptly announce that they would make for Weathertop or Horn’s Hill or Geron Spring Camp.

And during the half-hearted protests and arguments about whose job it was to pack up what, everyone would very carefully not look at their relieved hobbit friend.

Bilbo knew they didn’t resent him for it. But some days he thought he might prefer resentment to their growing worry. So what if he was getting worse? So what if the fidgeting started sooner than it used to before he returned from Erebor with Meer and Boren? So what if he was able to tolerate less socialization before retreating to his tent to avoid snapping at his friends over nothing? So what if his eyes burned hot at some small reminder of his dead companions? So what? It was no one’s problem but his own!

He couldn’t have explained to them what had changed even if he wanted to because he didn’t understand it himself. Perhaps it was the sheer brutality of Frodo’s loss, of being confronted by another hobbit whose grief was so very familiar and whose hollowed-out eyes he recognized from the mirror.

He’d spent seventeen years making himself into someone who would never be helpless again, but that was how he felt. Helpless. Was he really doing any good, making any difference, if hobbits with young sons could still die, still vanish in a moment? Bilbo knows he’s an asset to the Rangers – how could he not know, when they are forever reminding him of that fact? But no matter how many of his friends he saves with a well-timed arrow or warning, his awful (but oh-so-lovely) ring is always there to whisper, “Too little, too late.”

Your Rangers, your dwarves, your cousins. You couldn’t save any of them, the ring loves to remind him.

It was hard on his humans, seeing him breaking.

Maybe it was ridiculous, but maybe Primula and Drogo Baggins were the very last holdout of goodness in his life. They were living the life his parents should have had, the life he might have had, safe from the wide world and content in the rolling hills of the Shire and raising a beautiful son. The life a hobbit should lead. To see them taken away so horribly – to leave so much hurt behind them –

Bilbo sighed harshly, rubbing his face.

Maybe it was the first time he thought he saw the flash of Primula’s curls and heard her bright laughter echo around him on the path he was scouting. He had turned to follow the vision and saw a young hobbit, perhaps in her tweens, the age she’d been when he’d promised her parents he’d watch over her. She raced ahead and disappeared into a shaft of light that filtered through the trees, as though that were a normal thing for hobbit lasses to do.

Maybe it had started then, this latest fracturing of Bilbo M. Baggins.

He ignored the (ghosts?) visions easily enough when it was only a young, impish Primula Brandybuck lingering in the corner of his eye, swinging her legs from a perch on a high tree branch, sticking her tongue out at him when he said something particularly stodgy. He could have handled that. But she was soon joined by a younger Drogo Baggins who would trail his hands over the plants that lined the path, sketching an interesting fern or flower in his ever-ready journal while his future wife peered inquisitively over his shoulder. Seeing him blush at her nearness … it was surely more than any hobbit could bear, seeing a dead friend so flustered.

Bilbo ignored them as best he could. He’d had plenty of practice at that, between ignoring the something and ignoring the ring.

He lived for the moments when his mind was utterly empty, when there was only the thrill of adrenaline in his veins, the weight of his bow taut in his hands and his eyes combing through thick brush for some sign of danger. The pressure of flesh and armor against his blade. He saw no ghosts then, only his targets and the friends he would protect. But he could hardly stay in that state forever. Even among Rangers, combat was a fleeting thing.

And his friends grew more and more worried every time he shrugged off a new scar, brushed away their praise at his clean kills, or waved off their expressions of gratitude for his excellent scouting. Bilbo knew that Meer had caught the way that he looked at his kills with disappointment and longing. Bilbo never cared to ask whether she’d assumed he longed to be at peace like the corpses he’d made or that he desperately wished to take any satisfaction at all from his kills, the way the others clearly did. But as keen as her eyes were, Meer never caught him looking at his ghostly cousins as they walked about hand-in-hand, weaving between the Big Folk on the Road.

It was when he first saw Kili beaming at him across the camp fire that he began to slip up. He’d spilled his soup down the front of his clothes and, oh Goddess, he heard Fili’s voice among those asking if he was alright, teasingly wondering if the food was really that bad. It was so much harder to hide his reactions to the youngest dwarves as they tussled about or laughed at a comment the other had said which caused Ori, dear, ghostly Ori to blush bright red. It seemed as though he had reached the maximum capacity of ghosts that one hobbit can accumulate, and they had begun spilling over from his dreams and memories into the waking world.

He loved his Rangers, but he began to spend more time away from them. They were confused, a bit hurt perhaps. Meer and Boren certainly protested, and it was only when he insisted that they stay behind that they relented on their oaths to follow him across Middle-Earth. How could he explain to his vibrant Rangers, so full of life, that he sometimes preferred the company of the dead? How could he possibly make them understand that being with them hurt just as much as being alone? When he’s alone, he can pretend his ghosts are alive.

Though he spent some time simply wandering, there were a few trips he wanted to make without his Rangers, the road to the Blue Mountains in particular. He’d spent much of that journey watching as Fili and Kili’s phantoms chased one another along the path and Ori conferred with his cousin about sketching and Primula wove flowers into her pretty hair. Bilbo was thankful that he only rarely saw Thorin’s ghostly outline, leaning against a tree trunk while he brooded or snapping at his nephews to cease their mischief. It was as though his mind, even at its sickest, knew that he could only handle so much.

As painful as their presence was, Bilbo never asked them to leave. What was the point? They haunted his thoughts already. To walk with them, speak with them, even if they were only the latest manifestation of his madness … why should he give that up?

Bilbo heaved a long sigh, kicking a pebble out of his way with a sturdy toe. How could he possibly help Frodo recover when he refused to let his own ghosts go?

As he and Buttercup passed alongside the Brandywine River, Bilbo eyed it hatefully, his left hand white-knuckled on his walking stick. It was a helpless anger, for what was a hobbit to a river? What was his hatred to this ancient thing that will continue flowing long after he is gone? His throat tightened, eyes burning with tears. What are two new parents to such a thing? Nothing more than debris to be swept along as dispassionately as everything else. Rivers do not feel.

Bilbo envied that.

He shook his head hard, trying to knock the thoughts out of his mind. There were many reasons why it hurt to be home. Leaving was easy. Staying in the Shire … now that was a tall order. He had been considering it ever since he got the news about Primula and Drogo’s passing. Those gnawing thoughts grew more frequent when Amaranth Brandybuck told him, her voice weighed down by helplessness, that Frodo was withdrawing. The lad was escaping into himself for longer and longer periods of time.

When Bilbo had gone to Brandy Hall to see him, his heart broke. For all the cousins that surrounded little Frodo he still looked so alone. Bilbo thought that he just might be the best and the worst candidate to help him with that. Because he knew how it felt to lose everything and have everyone want to help. But taking him in, being solely responsible for his well-being …

It didn’t matter that he was named first choice of guardian by Primula. Bilbo privately reflected that she must have used some odd female logic unfathomable to him when she chose the wandering, unsociable Mad Baggins for a guardian, even if it was clear as day how dearly he loved them and their wonderful son. Because she’d chosen him, he could have taken Frodo that very day and no one could do a thing to stop him, but instead he’d returned to his Rangers and agonized over the decision for years, often pushing it to the back of his mind when the tangle it presented refused to be pulled apart.

Oh, what he wouldn’t give to see the future! How long would Frodo’s careful distance last? Would his young cousins eventually draw him out of it? Little Pippin and Merry were so very determined.

But somehow he knows they won’t reach Frodo, not where he’s gone. Bilbo knows well the grief that he sees in those blue eyes (Drogo’s eyes). He sees it every day in his own reflection, whenever he lets his mask down. He remembered his cousins and uncles and aunts trying desperately to reach him when he laid Belladonna Baggins in the ground. Instead, Bilbo had drawn away from them. He’d retreated into himself and wrapped his father’s frosty propriety around himself like chainmail.

For a decade a younger Bilbo had kept his lips tightly closed, refusing to sing the Song of Solitude. It was Her song, the tune that called hobbits to one another when they needed company, drawing strength from their kin. Bilbo was tempted at times, but he always found it easier to close his mouth and lift his chin. At least when he was alone, no one was making him try.

Of course he understood Frodo. But what could he offer him beyond understanding? Bilbo had dealt with the loss of his dwarves by feverish gardening and, when becoming a Bounder failed to be enough, had joined the northern Rangers, making him a pariah among hobbits. Frodo was far too young to devote his days to the flower beds that didn’t make sympathetic sounds or to flee from his grief by plunging out into the Wild. And the thought of staying still, even for so admirable a reason – how long would it be before his restlessness returned? His burning need to move?

What if he adopted the lad and Frodo noticed, despite Bilbo’s best efforts to hide it? Would he think that Bilbo resented him because he’d rather be on the Road? The thoughts made him envy the dogs that chase their tail round and round and eventually catch it. It was all more than enough to drive a hobbit mad and he needed no help with that. “Mad Baggins” was a more apt moniker than the gentlehobbits and busybodies who whispered it knew. My, if Daisy Boffin or Lobelia Sackville-Baggins ever learned about the ghosts or the humming wire stretched tight across his mind, he could only imagine what they’d call him then!

He wouldn’t even care about the stupid something anymore if he didn’t see it as the biggest obstacle to adopting Frodo. What if this something, this stray bit of fate that had ensnared him, finally declared itself while the lad still needed him and chose to tug him toward an unseen end, away from little Frodo? Bilbo wouldn’t just let it, of course, but suppose it gave him no choice? He hadn’t tried terribly hard to resist the something when it yanked him out his door after Thorin’s Company, nor when it had pulled him in the opposite direction of Mordor. What if, when denied, it grew steadily louder like it had in his kitchen while he stared at the contract, and built and built until he could hear nothing else, ever?

How could he in good faith take Frodo in if he wasn’t certain he could give his all to the young hobbit?

Bilbo needed advice. He’d avoided Rivendell since last spring, after the … incident. That had been the first time he’d ever mentioned the something to the ancient elf – to anyone. He hadn’t meant to, hadn’t planned on it at all. But he’d taken one look at Elrond’s adopted son, the man that Boren had called Strider, and the something bloomed, spreading to encompass his skull, his chest, his whole being with what felt like – recognition? Bilbo felt like he was in the presence of something great, something powerful, yet he still felt safe. But this flighty, wild, tense man – why should he make Bilbo feel so safe? For one wild moment he’d been afraid that it was some manner of crush, then recalled the difference in how he’d felt when he looked at Adalgrim as a tween, how he’d begun to feel when he looked at Thorin. No, this wasn’t infatuation. But there was a pull there, like magnets attracting, and the singing in his mind felt like it would spill out of his ear canals if he did not find a way to ease it. He’d fled for Elrond’s study, and his friend had comforted him as he babbled, horrified at the thought that what he’d felt meant pain for Elrond’s son. The something had always promised pain, sometimes avoidable if the warning was heeded. Usually not.

The elf had seemed ready to put it down to an uncommon foresight, not unlike his own visions, until he told him how the something had pulled him toward Erebor. After that, Elrond was more reserved in his pronouncements, and tentatively put forth that Bilbo might be godkissed, like Estel. A child of prophecy. The ridiculousness of those words seemed to shock the singing thread back into submission, and as the space between his ears fell silent, Bilbo had quickly changed the subject, wishing he’d kept his mouth closed. Elrond would want to talk about it, to pick it to death scientifically as though it were merely an academic topic and not the sole focus of Bilbo’s hatred. So he’d made his friend swear that he wouldn’t bring it up again, and though Elrond had been hurt and concerned, the tension between them soon eased. Elrond kept his promises. He liked that about him.

Bilbo avoided Estel, though. It unnerved him to be around the man with his skull singing like that. It was never so strong as their first meeting, but he had come to associate the increased pitch with something terrible (FatherThorinBalinPrimDro) and felt better simply staying away from him.

What Elrond had said about Estel being godkissed made sense, even if it couldn’t possibly apply to an ordinary hobbit. That must have been a god he’d felt wrapped around Estel, who was apparently heir to such and such thrones. He worried for the boy. Estel looked so young to have such a future weighing on his shoulders.

He’d never spoken to Elrond about the matter again, but it seemed to Bilbo that he owed it to Frodo to face this something. He was more than willing to get rid of it by chasing down his fate, but he was deathly afraid of the elf lord telling him that there was nothing he could do. That it would always rule him, no matter what he went through.

Bilbo was startled from his thoughts when something lightly hit his face, making him jump. A leaf. Of course – it was autumn again, when the Green Lady shed her brown coat to make way for fresh green. He laughed ruefully, trying to calm his pounding heart. Not everything was an attack, after all. He walked a while taking in the colors of the changing trees before his mind turned back to Rivendell. The something was just one of the problems that he hoped Elrond would be able to remedy. Leaving the ring behind had been a test of a sort. It had also been the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he already felt lighter for it. There was no dark voice waiting to poison his brighter thoughts. Bilbo had threatened to get rid of the cruel thing countless times, but until he’d thrown it beneath his floorboard he hadn’t been certain that he could.

And now that he had, he was hopeful. Hopeful that the ring really was the cause of the other thing, the unpleasant stickiness that soured his mood and made his temper flare. After all, both the other thing and the ring conspired to make him feel horrible, though only one had a voice. But if the ring’s absence did not fix the thing dragging him down, then … Bilbo swallowed. He would finally bring it up to Lord Elrond. His stomach twisted into knots at the thought.

Bilbo couldn’t say why he was so reluctant to tell Elrond, or anyone for that matter, about the other thing. Rivendell was a place of healing, and surely there was nowhere which would be more accepting of his illness, if illness it was. But the thought of saying it out loud, of admitting the weakness he’d guarded so carefully and failed to overcome on his own … it felt shameful, somehow. Because it must be a failure on his part, an inability to master the losses he’d faced. Others had lost as many as he and they carried on in spite of it. Just look at Gandalf! The clear contrast between the wizard’s gaiety and his own strained smiles made the feeling of failure worsen.

He could feel it clearly now that it had oozed its way to the surface of his thoughts, and had to bite back his disappointment. This part, it seemed, was not the ring’s doing. And that meant it was something wrong within him. Objectively, he knew his friend would not judge him for it. Rivendell was a place of healing and acceptance, far more so than one might expect of the upright and unchanging elves. They welcomed the Rangers in every winter and hosted any who came calling, no matter how odd. Elrond was just the person to understand. He knew that. But the shame lingered still.

But Bilbo Baggins had proved his mettle against trolls and wargs and war, not to mention the cooking of men who had no business being anywhere near a cauldron. He would face this too, because he had no choice. For his tiny nephew, he would try. He’d force the words to unstick from his throat and he’d tell Elrond about the darkness that smothered his happiest moments, about the bursts of temper and his lack of concern at the thought of an early death. He’d tell him about the something, the whole truth this time, not a panic-spurred rambling about sensations and fate. He’d explain the restlessness, the itch to move. He would lay himself bare, and if he was told that there was no cure to any of it, well, he’d deal with that once the words were said.

The ghosts, he suspected, watching Primula drag Fili into a dance, would stay his secret.

~~~

The ring had allowed for being hated. It hadn’t allowed for being left.

It raged against its confinement, but its shrieks went unanswered and there is only so much that a mostly-inanimate object could do, even when it was the source of all evil. The hobbits milling around couldn’t hear its siren song. The tiny species was so frustratingly incorruptible! But the ring felt confident that there was something for it to work with in the female named Lobelia. “My dearest cousin,” his bearer would sneer behind his bright smile whenever she came to pester him. The ring was of the opinion that its bearer had every right to sneer. Bilbo Baggins’s will was stronger by far than the Lobelia woman whose promising covetousness even extended to spoons.

But even she would not dare to enter the home that had become the ring’s prison after the severe warning that its bearer had sent her. And the ring, aware of all its bearer did, hadn’t missed that Bilbo Baggins had been thorough in his precautions. Those firm instructions that no one enter his home while he was away were proving quite a roadblock to its escape.

It was all thoroughly frustrating. However, the ring was not concerned. They always came back.

Even Gollum, in a fit of desperation, had thrown it back into the Great River Anduin, trying to “drown its whispers.” He nearly drowned himself trying to retrieve it the next day.

No, the ring was certain Bilbo Baggins would return. It had a different concern.

Now that Bilbo was alone, the ring wouldn’t be able to keep her out.

Powerful fingertips had been reaching for the bearer for years. The OTHER ONE, scratching at the barrier. She wanted HIM though, not the ring. The ring, disconcerted, had clung tightly to its bearer. Perhaps too tightly, given its bearer’s worsening hallucinations.

The ring had spent two thousand years beneath the Great River. It had waited. It knew more of patience than any elf ever could.

But in all that time it had never worried.

The bearer was its own. Its to destroy, its to corrupt, its to plague in dreams. Its to protect from other greedy, wanting things, like the Fangorn Forest which had sung so sweetly to its bearer, never respecting that he was claimed. This bearer was unique. And he was the ring’s, until the ring chose another. Until the ring made its way back to its master.

The Master was weak yet. Too weak to issue the call. The ring had found someone to wait with. Not just any weakling. This bearer could survive the long journey to Mordor, could hold the ring without devolving into a slobbering mess of need. It wanted this bearer back. But it was powerless to lure him home. It could only count on the craving for its beauty, for its security and the reprieve it offered to all the thinking that plagued Bilbo Baggins to drive its bearer back into its embrace.

Until then the ring could only wait, and worry.

~~~

Bilbo packed a pipe with his prized Old Toby and breathed in the comforting smoke. He felt he’d earned it, after the week he'd had. Everything had been going swimmingly for the past month of travel, and then misfortune struck. It had started with an unexpected autumn downpour which drenched all the convenient kindling and made for an uncomfortable day's ride and a muddy few days' walk. Then Buttercup’s saddlebags had somehow slipped off into the mud. This was followed by the appearance of a goblin scouting party which had forced him to backtrack through said mud and lose a half day’s progress. Bilbo felt thoroughly in need of a reprieve. At least he wouldn’t be on the Road much longer. By tomorrow he would be able to spy Rivendell gleaming in the valley.

This week aside, things had been … easier. His step was lighter, his darker thoughts easier to push away. He could breathe again. And the forest seemed to breathe with him, its golden-brown leaves dancing in what he fancied was a show of support, a celebration at his victory in the fight against the ring.

For it had been a fight. Bilbo had been in enough of them to know that. A curious opponent: one so dear to him and yet so vile. The ring had proven its worth countless times, and even now he missed it, a shine he could lose himself in contemplating on the sleepless nights. Such a tiny thing, to have such a hold on him.

And he’d let it go. When its pull was stronger than ever before, wrapping around him and insisting that it was needed, he’d drawn on the memory of those who had shaped him, who had made him Bilbo, and the ring … had suddenly seemed quite small, in comparison. Just a little thing to be put away. That was how he chose to think of it when the craving came knocking, when his fingers curled with want and his thoughts were consumed with a circle of perfect gold. That it was only a little thing, and that without it, he felt more like Bilbo than he had in years.

The ring gone, and the something silent. He might have felt alone, if not for the ghosts.

Bilbo was lost in thought when Thorin Oakenshield sat down beside him, leaving just enough space that his spectral coat did not brush the hobbit’s arm. Bilbo’s breath stuck in his throat for a long moment before he managed to take a deep breath. Thorin’s presence was a powerful one, even in death. That presence wasn’t unwelcome, just unexpected. This particular ghost rarely sought him out.

Perhaps because this particular ghost knew better.

Bilbo kept his eyes on the fire, watching the embers dance. How many campfires had he studied over the years, searching for answers or for some measure of comfort? This one was just as abstruse as the others, offering no new revelations. But it gave him something to focus on that wasn’t Thorin.

“I wish I could have saved you.” A simple statement, and embarrassingly obvious. Some wordsmith you’ll make if you ever set down your stories to paper, Bilbo Baggins, he thought wryly. But it was the truth, stripped down to simplicity.

He offered his friend the pipe, and Thorin smiled just a bit as he shook his head.

Bilbo wondered what he’d do if the specter ever actually took it. Would it fall through his hands? What would he do if it did not? Bilbo never tried to touch them, and the hallucinations always kept just out of the way, the younger ones ducking around him in a cheerful dance, and Thorin keeping his distance. Tonight was an oddity, and he found himself drawn to speak of the thought that had plagued him for years. “I always thought you were too stubborn to do anything you didn’t want to. Mountains were more easily moved than Thorin Oakenshield.” Bilbo felt his face twist as tears threatened, but he forced out a very hard sigh. He wanted this said, even if he was the only one to truly hear it. “Does that mean you wanted to die, at the end?”

Thorin was quiet, as he’s always been. Still sparing with his words, even as a hallucination. He only gestured to the thin scar on Bilbo’s arm, the one he’d gotten when he tried to teach himself how to swim. He’d never lied to himself about what he’d really been doing in the water that day.

The implication was clear. If anyone would understand wanting to die of guilt, it would be Bilbo.

The hobbit tugged his traveling cloak over his arm to cover it. He’d fought, at the last. Even if he sometimes hated the Brandywine for failing to kill him like it had his cousins, he had fought for his life at the end.

“I didn’t want to throw it away,” Bilbo explained after a long silence. “Even if you did – and I guess I’ll never know for sure –” A small huff of laughter escaped the hobbit. “And Thorin you were hardly in any state to be making life-ending decisions – well, there were the boys to consider. They never got to grow old, never got to see more of the world.” His eyes burned. “They deserved it more than anyone ever could, but they didn’t have the chance. What would they say, if I threw my own life away?”

His eyes traveled to the boys where they splashed one another in the nearby stream, the moonlight lending a silver shine to their ghostly image. Kili saw him looking and waved, and his brother took the opportunity to splash him in the face. Kili sputtered, promising vengeance.

The ghosts are always like that. Friendly, happy. Even Thorin’s, in his own gruff way. They never say a word of blame. They were not like their twins in his dreams of fire and accusation and a song, always a song. These ghosts are kind. It’s their presence that makes him feel guilty.

Bilbo sometimes used the ring to hide from the ghosts on the long nights when the boys bickered by the fire and Ori drew patterns in the dirt with a stick, his artist’s mind always working. He’d escape into the misty unreality, and the ghosts would fade away. But that place didn’t make him feel any better, really, so he spent most nights turning the band of gold over and over in his hands without slipping it on.

On a night like this one, Thorin had sat down beside him, interrupting his steady contemplation. The dwarf’s sole comment had been, “It’s got a nice shine to it.”

They’d stared at it a long time, him and his ghost.

“So did the Arkenstone,” Bilbo had said, his voice a broken whisper.

It was buried with Thorin. Bilbo rather wished it wasn’t. And sometimes, when his thoughts were especially dark, he thinks that it would have been easier to stay in the tomb beside Thorin and the boys, unnoticed with his ring on. No one would be disturbed by a hobbit where he didn’t belong.

But he went on living in spite of those thoughts. He got things done. He made sure his Rangers wore their coats and ate enough to keep them going through a long day’s march and bathed when they went without a bit too long for his poor nose to handle. He did things that made Meer smile and told Boren his stories and kept them safe. Even when it was hard, he lived.

And without the ring, it was getting easier. These weeks without it had relaxed something inside of him, a curled fist he had never noticed until went slack. Bilbo put out his pipe and bid Buttercup and the ghosts goodnight. Their sleepy chorus of “goodnight, Bilbo” both hurt and warmed his old heart as he climbed into his bedroll and, eventually, managed to nod off to sleep, the soft murmurs of his cousins and Ori conferring over the meaning of daffodils fading into deep quiet.

The next day, he climbed a well-trodden path up a steady rise, setting a slower pace despite his excitement to reach the top. It wouldn’t be fair to hurry Buttercup, and she’d been so very good. They were alone on the Road that afternoon, his ghosts absent. He appreciated the time alone. No ring, no something. Only the rustle of leaves.

For the season of dying, the air felt heavy with life. There was a charge to it that made his heart pound. The birds sang to each other as though it were spring. The forest had never seemed so alive. Bilbo knew that it could all be in his head, a reflection of his own newfound energy. But he enjoyed it nevertheless, and a tune rose to his lips. It was a fitting song to sing so close to Rivendell, since he had learned it on his second visit. “Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together! The wind’s in the tree-top, the wind’s in the heather …”

But it didn’t take long for his singing to bring back memories of blood pooling on ice, and he let the music die. The birds had quieted while he sang as though listening to an odd new cousin’s song, and they surged to fill the void he left. He laughed at one particularly loquacious wren that fluttered around his head. Buttercup was less impressed, and the prickly pony waited until it was behind her to swish her tail, catching it by surprise. The bird chattered angrily, berating the mare. Bilbo chuckled. “That wasn’t very nice,” he reproved, but the pony only strutted ahead, looking proud of herself.

Within an hour, Bilbo topped the rise, and his breath caught in his throat.

Rivendell was beautiful as ever. Bilbo had a hard time believing it could ever be otherwise. Even so dreadful a creature as Smaug would surely hesitate to destroy such a sight.

The herald who strode out to meet him as he approached the gates only inclined his head in greeting, his eyes gleaming. He knew full well that Bilbo would not wish to accompany him to his guest room right away. Bilbo made an effort to offer the customary pleasantries, but the elf only gave him a wink and took Buttercup for a hard-earned grooming. Bilbo bit his lip, staring after him. He must seem terribly rude, he thought. But as he strode toward the garden with eager steps despite his weariness, the thoughts slid from his mind.

He used to be more concerned with things like that.

But oh, who could make small talk when there was a garden to see? And such a garden it was!

He sank to his knees in the soft earth, breathing in. Everything else fell away as the bouquet filled his senses. For the first time in ages he felt right. The lingering craving for his beautifulterriblehewantsitneedsit ring faded into the ambient noise. The emptiness in him was satisfied for the moment, and his feet did not twitch with the urge to move along. The elves had spent hundreds of years cultivating this garden to perfection, each plant a direct descendant of the first flowers to bloom here.

Bilbo thought that if there was a paradise to be found, it must look a lot like this.

Silly as it might sound, he fancied that he loved every single flower he saw. The thought brought a twinge of regret. He suspected that there was too much love in him, and there was no safe way to spend it. Perhaps if he exhausted his love on these flowers, knowing full well that their blooms would wither only to grow again in the spring, he might stop feeling so wretched when his frail mortal friends died. And the flowers were so easy to love, with their delicate petals and elegant stalks, the diversity of beauty a garden offered the eye. From the regal calla lilies to the shy daisy, each held a special place in his heart.

“They love you as well.”

Bilbo turned at the sound of a melodic voice, seeking out the gardener who had so aptly guessed his thoughts. He was surprised to find only Elrond’s sons, who were waiting a polite distance away. Seeing that he had noticed them, Elladan strode forward, Elrohir close behind. “I did not wish to interrupt,” the young lord explained, his eyes warm. “You seemed in the middle of holy communion.”

Bilbo was about to ask if one of them had spoken a moment ago before Elrohir frowned at him, his head tilted to the side in a birdlike gesture as he studied the hobbit. “I don’t get it,” the elf said a tone Bilbo recognized. He’d heard it from the fauntlings who asked him countless questions about his travels before their parents could shoo them away from the strange hobbit. It was almost pouty, and it made him grin. It was easy to forget how much older they were when one of them used that tone. “Even the elves who tend the gardens don’t relax around their work the way you do. You’re always so tense, except when you’re here.” He cast a skeptical eye around the flower beds. “I mean, they’re pretty and all, but give me a fast horse and my bow any day.”

His brother nodded in agreement, eyes bright with curiosity. How could a garden possibly beat that?

Bilbo shrugged, not sure how he could explain it to them. He simply felt right here. “It must be because I am a hobbit.”

That seemed to satisfy Elrohir, who turned to his brother expectantly. His twin wrinkled his nose at him, shifting on his feet. “Father wants to see you,” he told Bilbo. “And he asked us to bring everyone inside. Something’s wrong.”

Bilbo’s hand shifted automatically to Sting, and he did not miss the way the elf’s eyes widened a fraction. They still were not used to the idea of him as a Ranger.

“Not wrong, per se,” his brother interjected. “Just … off.”

“Off,” Bilbo repeated doubtfully.

The elves shrugged in unison. “You know Father. He must have a good reason. He said something about a wildness on the wind.”

His brother frowned at him. “I thought he said ‘a wilderness.’”

Elladan thought a moment. “I’m pretty sure it was ‘wildness.’”

Elrohir opened his mouth to argue when Bilbo interrupted by saying that he would go find their father. Bilbo was reluctant to leave the garden so soon, but it wasn’t as though it would be going anywhere, and he wouldn’t ignore Elrond’s instincts. For all he knew the elf might have foreseen something, and Bilbo wanted to be ready for any trouble, despite the twins’ assurances that it was not a violent sort of trouble.

They escorted him to Elrond’s study though he clearly knew the way, telling him about their recent escapades. It seemed that the two were never still for long, and he fancied that they might understand his urge to move around so much better than most. They would be gone for weeks at a time pursuing some orc pack or intriguing rumor, harassing their cousins in the Greenwood or, Bilbo knew from personal experience, tracking down and bothering the Rangers, if they could find them. No wonder Elrond had such fierce headaches.

The lads bid him an elaborate farewell when they reached the ornate double doors, bowing low and calling him “O great hobbit and friend of elves.” He snorted at their silliness, waving them away. Even if something was wrong, the brothers’ humor never faltered.

They reminded him rather a lot of two other brothers he’d known.

Elrond looked up from his desk when he stepped inside. The ancient elf had a way of smiling with his eyes that seemed far more genuine than any movement of the mouth. Elrond took his friend’s hand in his own, and though he seemed preoccupied, the elf was clearly happy to see him. Bilbo suspected that Elrond might have thought he’d continue to avoid Rivendell after their uncomfortable conversation. The thought made him feel sheepish, and he felt surer of his decision to share his worries with the elf than ever. “You made good time, my friend. Your letter arrived only three weeks before you.”

“Have I chosen a bad time to visit?” Bilbo wondered.

Elrond shook his head. “There is no ill date to receive a friend.” He bid Bilbo to sit in a comfortable chair, settling across from him in a chair of his own.

“What’s the matter, melon nin?” Bilbo asked. “Why call everyone inside?”

Elrond’s lips turned down in a slight frown. “I’m not sure that there is something the matter. It’s merely a feeling. A strange energy in the air. It is … unfamiliar to me.”

Bilbo felt his eyebrows raise. That was saying something.

His friend sat in pensive silence a moment longer before returning his attention to the hobbit. “But I have no reason to think it dangerous, so I will wait to see if it becomes something more tangible before rendering judgement.” His grey eyes held Bilbo’s own. “Your letter indicated that there was much you wished to speak of. I understand if you would rather wait until you have recovered from you journey, but if you wish to speak now, I am here to listen.”

He threaded his fingers together loosely, his posture relaxed despite his curiosity.

It would be easy, Bilbo mused. He could make excuses about his aching feet or the desire for a full meal in his stomach, but those would be lies. His feet did not ache. His stomach was in knots. And he did not come all this way to be a coward.

As he searched for the words to convey everything that he had tried to keep hidden, he found it hard to draw breath. His heart hammered in his chest, and he thought he must be flushed with how warm he felt. Pressure built in the air around him, stifling, and he was about to make his excuses to Lord Elrond, say that he wasn’t feeling well, when he noticed the elf looking around in alarm, his pale skin flushed and his hand on the hilt of his sword. Bilbo had no air to ask what was wrong, and the room throbbed with energy, with – with what almost felt like the something –

“I would speak with him first, if you please.” The voice shattered the pressure in the room and Bilbo nearly fell out of his seat in surprise as he sucked in a gasp of air. The voice was right behind him. Elrond turned in its direction and his eyes went wide – the sound he made was suspiciously close to a squeak –

“After all,” the melodic voice continued, and Bilbo could hardly hear it over the sound of his thudding heart. He wasn’t afraid though. Perhaps he should have been. But the voice was wrapping him in the promise of safety, of unconditional love, and the smell of home. Hands settled on his shoulders, warm, delicate, with a hint of untold strength held in check. “I have waited so much longer.”

Chapter Text

“I’m going to borrow him for just a moment,” the voice continued, sounding a touch playful. Bilbo couldn’t see the speaker, but he got the sense that she might have winked at Elrond, because the regal elf seemed to choke on the breath in his throat. Bilbo might have laughed if he wasn’t so preoccupied with the fact that whoever this stranger was had made Elrond react like that. Who … ?

The hands at his shoulders squeezed reassuringly. The warmth that had proceeded her arrival spread out from her grip, sinking through his travelling clothes and his flesh, settling into his bones. The relaxation was absolute. It was like snuggling down further into cozy blankets. His skin prickled, and Elrond’s startled face faded, overtaken by a field of unexpected color. Bilbo blinked hard. He was clearly no longer in the study, though there was no sensation of having moved, only that humming energy along his arms and up his neck. He’d felt something like it before when Gandalf spoke in that booming voice of his. Magic? he wondered. Bilbo blinked hard and the scene around him came into focus. As it did, he gasped in amazement. Rivendell was beautiful, but this … this was …

If there was such a thing as perfection, then this was the perfect garden. Rolling hills that spoke of the Shire stretched for miles, every inch covered in flowers. He saw flowers he had grown in his own garden, flowers he’d only read of in stories, and flowers he’d never even imagined, somehow coexisting in perfect harmony.

“Welcome home,” the voice whispered beside his ear before removing her hands from his shoulders. The speaker stepped around him, moving like a dancer between the flowers, and Bilbo finally saw her.

She was not so very different from a hobbit. The lady stood only a few inches taller than him, a riot of wavy moss-green hair falling just past her shoulders. Her lovely face was round and her cheeks were pink and there was something very Baggins-like about her nose. The tips of her ears were even pointed like his own. But no hobbit ever had eyes like hers, a brilliant green like algae on a fishing pond. Bilbo had never seen their like in all his travels.

“Do you know me, dear one?” she asked. There was a hint of impish humor in her smile that was all Took.

Of course he did. He could not fail to know her because she had sculpted his soul.

“Yavanna, Green Lady,” he breathed, and shakily sank to his knees, bowing his head. It seemed the most appropriate thing to do before a goddess.

She seemed to have other ideas, a warm sound of amusement proceeding the brush of magic against his skin. It felt like a brush of static energy and the oddness of stroking a cat’s fur in the wrong direction. The earth beneath him rose, prodding against his calves and startling a frightened sound out of him before the feeling of total safety washed through him again. The ground was taking a new shape around him, the slight but insistent pressure at the back of his knees encouraging him to bend them. He complied almost without thinking, and by the time his thoughts caught up he was surprised to find that he did not fall backwards as he tipped but rather was cradled by warm earth that rose at his back. Dazedly, he understood that the earth was taking the shape of a chair. His heart beat quickly as he watched the rough creation become something elegant. Vines twined around the earth, creating armrests, curling into elaborate designs as though determined to please. Bilbo’s eyes were wide as he watched, spellbound.

“You needn’t bow to me, Bilbo Baggins.” She said his name slowly, as if her mouth could not help but smile around its shape. Her voice was soft with indulgence. “Beloved of the flowers. They have spoken of you often, in their way.”

He swallowed, his throat dry as he looked back at the goddess. “A-At your service, milady.”

Her smile widened, and her nose crinkled as she laughed. It was a sound as sweet as bird song, but it hit him like a mountain gale. “You are a sweet thing. But you have it backwards. I am the one at your service. And I mean to help you.” Her gaze fell to his hands where they trembled against the arm rests. “I must apologize for taking you from your world without your permission,” she said, sounding regretful. “I can return you now, if you wish it. I brought you here because it is … difficult for me to enter your world, and harder still to remain there. Imladris is easier than most, but it is still a great strain. It is far easier to speak to you here.”

Of course the goddess of hobbits would have manners, he thought dizzily. She had paused, and he stumbled over his words when he finally realized that she expected a reply. “Oh! I- I understand, Lady Yavanna. I would be honored to speak with you. It’s all quite alright …” he trailed off weakly. It wasn’t every day that you sat before one of the Valar, after all. He was finding it rather difficult to untie his tongue.

Yavanna’s expression gentled. She bent down and laid a palm against the soil, which arched beneath her hand like a cat craving touch. Bilbo understood. A very hobbity part of him yearned for her attention, even though he already had it. It was a strange feeling, and not altogether pleasant. The ground rose to fashion her a chair similar to his own, and she sat across from him with her hands clasped loosely in her lap. “I fear I’ve overwhelmed you,” she said sympathetically. Though he was a nervous wreck, she seemed perfectly at ease. “Take a moment to gather your thoughts. Take as long as you need.” Her head turned to study the fields of flowers, and perhaps other things that he could not see. “Time is of no concern here.”

Though it seemed rather rude to take up more of her time when she’d gone out of her way to bring him here, he welcomed the reprieve. The hobbit focused on breathing properly, darting glances her way every few seconds. He might have thought himself in a dream, except that his dreams were dark things these days, and were never so fantastical. Though this place seemed too beautiful to be real, he had no doubt that he was awake. He inspected the flowers around him, greedy to take in more. He savored the bouquet as he breathed in, feeling the tension in his shoulders and his mind go slack.

So this was the place. This was where he’d go when he died. He felt rather content, knowing that. One less mystery to concern him. He could lose himself in these rolling hills.

“Your home is incredible,” he said softly. Words couldn’t come close, but he felt it was only polite to say something, especially since he could not stop staring.

She hummed, a warm sound that he felt in his chest. “The Pastures are my personal favorite. I made them for my siblings, that they might have a place to come and heal.” He felt her focus return to him. “That is why I’ve brought you here. To heal.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes were troubled. “Child … I have failed you. Because in all of my creation you are the only hobbit to be so unhappy for so long. In 600 years, every hobbit who sought happiness has always found it in the Shire. But you, dear one?” Her hand reached toward him and slender fingers gently cupped his cheek. “You travelled so far to find peace. I made you with adventure in your heart, then failed to give you the aptitude for the grief that adventures bring. I wanted so badly to reach you, but I could not. I watched while you fought for your happiness, hoping against hope that you would succeed. And you did fight so very hard.” Bilbo hadn’t realized that he’d begun to cry until her thumb brushed a tear away. “I never made my hobbits to fight for anything. I am sorry, Bilbo.”

Bilbo supposed he ought to feel more surprised to learn just what an anomaly he was, but if he felt anything it was relief at the thought of little Frodo recovering from his own melancholy. Surely he could find peace in the Shire, even if his unnatural uncle could not. “My thanks for your concern, Lady Yavanna.” He gave her a weary smile. “But I doubt that the Valar made hearts so that they could mend them.”

Her expression was pensive, her voice heavy as she drew her hand away. “Be that as it may, I would see you happy again.”

That seemed to be everyone’s concern. That Bilbo Baggins be happy again. The family members who still spoke to him without rigid disdain, who risked catching his unhobbitiness. His Rangers with their worried eyes. The elves he called mellyn. The Bounders who stopped in to visit when he was home. The Gamgees, and even the Wizard, who surely must have different standards for happiness than the others, and now the goddess herself. All of them wishing for his happiness like it was something he could give them. Bilbo had given up on happiness long ago. He prayed for peace and to feel content with what he had. To settle for what he could get because, really, he was fortunate to have so much. But no matter how many times he reminded himself of that fact, he still felt empty from bottom to top.

“You came to Rivendell seeking a change,” she prompted when he said nothing.

“I came to ask Elrond’s advice.” Bilbo hesitated, his eyes on the flowers. He’d come all this way to ask Elrond. Perhaps she could help him instead. When he managed to unstick his throat, he began slowly, unable to meet her eye, “Milady, I have been struggling with something for a while now. It’s … sticky. It stuck to me and it doesn’t seem eager to let go.”

“I hear your prayers, dear one,” she assured him before he felt compelled to say more, her forehead creasing with concern. “I know what troubles you. And how long you have prayed that it would cease.”

He ducked his head, cheeks aflame. “I have not prayed often of late,” he admitted, feeling a bit ashamed. It was, he decided, very rude to have ignored the goddess when she had clearly paid close attention to him.

From his lowered gaze he caught her green tresses moving as she shook her head and glanced back up. “Yes, you have,” she informed him patiently. “You commune with me whenever you take solace in your flowerbeds, when your trowel shifts the earth to plant a new seed. When you trail your hands along a fragile stem or dig your toes into the Road.” Her voice was achingly sad. “You’ve been praying to me for a long time. I only wish I could have answered you before.”

Bilbo licked his lips nervously as he processed this new information. At least if she knew how he was feeling then he didn’t have to struggle through explaining it. That was a weight lifted. He sighed, leaning down to trace the petals of a calla lily. “Can you tell me what’s gone wrong with me?”

She hummed and tucked a curl behind his ear. Bilbo wasn’t accustomed to being touched so much, though the Rangers had desensitized him over time. He’d grown used to Meer and Boren’s clinging and how they constantly burrowed into him like cats seeking comfort, demanding stories. Kallan often leaned his inconvenient height against the hobbit, proclaiming him to be the perfect arm rest, and was promptly dumped on the ground for his troublemaking, to Rion’s endless amusement. The other Rangers would clap a hand on his shoulder on occasion or impudently ruffle his hair, but the goddess’s touch felt different. It emanated affection and acceptance, reminding him of the way his parents would coddle him when he was small.

“You are not the first to feel it. For some it passes. For others, it comes in waves. Some fight it every day, as you have done. Yet you are the only hobbit to be so afflicted. I can protect all those in the bounds of the Shire, keep the rest of the world and its troubles at bay.” She frowned. “But the outside world spilled into you.” There was a thoughtful pause and she reached over to take his hand, tracing patterns there. “The elves call it life sickness. The men of Gondor call it depression. I would call it my failure as your goddess, for surely I have let you down.”

“Is there a cure?”

“Often the cure is change, just as it is often the catalyst. Though a shadow has hung over you since your parents left your world for mine, the catalyst for this sickness was, if I’m not mistaken, the loss of your dwarrow companions.”

Hearing it out loud was a spear to the stomach. He felt the air leave him in a sharp gust.

It took him a minute to get his breath back, and he realized she was watching him, her hand on his a comforting pressure. It was ridiculous, he thought faintly. There was no reason for those words to affect him so. But then, things never made much sense with dwarves.

“Their loss changed you, when who you are was already in flux, accommodating who you had become on your journey.”

Words fell off his tongue in a rush without his say so. “I don’t think I can ever be happy again without them. And I just … accepted that.” And there it was, out in the open. The truth of things. It didn’t come with any sense of relief, only a sort of resigned satisfaction at having found the right words. Writers appreciate that sort of thing.

“You’re certain?” she murmured. “How can you be when you’ve never tried? You cling to your ghosts.”

He felt a flare of panic. He’d never talked about the ghosts, would never want to, and the thought of doing so now was just – no. It wouldn’t do. Bilbo wet his lips, feeling like this was far too much honesty for any one conversation. He answered anyway, his eyes skittering away from hers. He could pretend she had meant his memories of them, not the ghosts. “No. I didn’t,” he admitted in a rough voice. “Not really. I would rather have the memory of them close than be alone.” He swallowed hard. “For little Frodo, I am prepared to try. If I’m to take care of him, I can’t be cluttered with wraiths and memories. I have to put them away.” It sounded so easy, said like that. As though they were old linens he could pack up and place into storage.

“And could you?” she asked, so painfully gentle. “Could you put them away?”

“I …” His voice hitched and he wiggled his nose in irritation, trying to chase away the threatening tears. “I don’t … know,” he admitted, stressing his words as he forced them to come out evenly, “that there would be very much left of me if I did.” He clenched his fist under her hand, suddenly angry, the same hot anger that had lived in his chest since Thorin died needlessly, thoughtlessly, leaving him behind. The anger that he let out only when he hunted the filth of Middle Earth, what kept him awake for hours into the night when he had nothing to spend it on. “They made me care again! They taught me how to be brave,” he choked, “and I learned just in time for it to make no difference at all! Then I was supposed to just go home? To be a gentlehobbit again? I was barely any good at it before! I couldn’t do it!” he cried, then almost swallowed his tongue because he realized he was yelling at the goddess. She didn’t seem bothered, thankfully. He grimaced, mortified at his poor manners, and with half a century of practice he straightened his shoulders and sealed himself behind an icy façade of propriety. “I wouldn’t,” he said with finality. “And since I couldn’t do anything about the feeling, I decided to make myself useful. And I have been useful,” he insisted, as though he needed to convince someone. “And while I was being useful, I tried to find whatever it is that the something was so insistent that I find.”

The goddess’s expression was intent and utterly without judgement. “You’ve spent a long time seeking your fate, seeking a resolution to the extraordinary awareness that you call the ‘something.’” She paused, lips pressing together. Her next words were delicate as hands placing a glass heirloom on a high shelf. “How long have you hoped that the destiny you chase will kill you?”

Bilbo jerked away from her in shock, his heart hammering. A somber smile touched her lips. “I’m sure you planned to ask it politely,” she added gently.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. The goddess watched him for a minute, waiting, then extended her hand again, offering comfort but not forcing contact. After a long moment he carefully slid his hand into her own, and she traced patterns with her thumb. It eased the knot of anger and panic inside of him. Was this what she meant about being able to help if she could reach me? he wondered. His turmoil was not gone, but it was easier to bear. With a jolt he realized that the ease he felt wrapping around him now reminded him of how the something sometimes felt, like family and safety. Like his mother humming a lullaby. It made his heart hurt, to think he could have had this sooner. The hurt twisted deeper as he wondered if he’d have accepted it.

“It’s just,” he said weakly, “that I wouldn’t have minded so very much if it did.” It was important that she understand that. He wasn’t suicidal. Not really.

Not anymore.

She didn’t mention the incident with the river. “I understand, Bilbo.” That familiarity with which she says his name still sends a shock of surprise through him, because he had only just met her. She spoke as if they’d known each other for years. But he has met her, hasn’t he? She’s in everything. She was there at his beginning and she’d welcome him home at his ending.

They were quiet for long minutes as he calmed his frantic thoughts. When she spoke again her voice seemed to come from inside his own head, so easily did it fit into the cadence of his own thoughts. “I would like to help you, if you will permit me. The options we might have explored to ease your pain before, if I had been able to reach you all those years ago, have long since passed. Let us explore what I can do for you now.”

The determination in her face made him swallow hard even as his heart began to race. The most he had hoped for from Elrond had been a healing that could somehow work on the sticky thing. But the goddess seemed to have something greater in mind.

Perhaps he should have anticipated her first suggestion. It took him by surprise all the same.

“You could forget those you’ve lost. I could dim the memories until they could not cause you any pain. You need never feel their absence again.”

Shocked as he was, he spoke without hesitation. “No.” Then he corrected, “No, thank you. I cared for them all too much to give up the memories I have of them.”

She didn’t sound surprised. “Even when they cause you such pain?”

“Even then. Besides,” he licked his lips, stumbling over his words a bit, “kno-knowing them, traveling with them, sharing their perils and their joy, it shaped me, for better or worse. They didn’t just change me. They’re part of me.” There was more he could say but he got the sense she already understood.

“I guessed as much. You hold their memory so close. Yet you said that you would try to put them away.”

His mouth went dry. She was right, of course. Here was the goal he’d promised to work toward, being offered without any effort at all. He cast around for reasons why this was simply not a viable option, not even a little bit. “If I forgot them, what would I have to offer Frodo? I wouldn’t understand him anymore. I’m not certain I’d be good company at all.” He trailed off, thinking aloud. “Who am I if I’m not missing them?”

The goddess nodded, letting out a sigh. “I understand. I just wanted to let you know that it is an option.”

They were quiet for a time.

“Or,” she began, and there was something behind her words, something like hope, that made his heart ache. “You could remain here, with me.” Her fingertips curled into his hair, stroking it in a manner so calming that his eyelids drooped. “You need never feel sorrow nor pain again. Your family here could ease all your troubles.”

My family. “My parents,” he rasped.

The fingers gently carding through his hair stilled and began to retract, one catching a lock and playing with it between her fingers. “Your family would see to it that you never hurt again. And should you thirst for adventure still, I could show you what no living mortal is ever permitted to see. The Pastures, and what lies beyond them.”

Places of he’d dreamed of as a fauntlings chasing fireflies. Bilbo didn’t know what to say. As he turned the thought over, he felt her retreat to give him space. He met her eyes, struck by the unearthly green once more. “You want me to stay.”

She nodded. “I want to atone for my failure. I want to give you peace. This is the only way I know to give you that. I would lay my lands at your feet to ease your pain.” Her determination floored him. Even if she felt responsible for him, which he wasn’t altogether sure she should, it was hard to wrap his head around her taking still more time out of her (surely very busy) existence to slake the wanderlust that plagued him.

To see Valinor …

Who wouldn’t be tempted? And yet …

“Frodo,” she spoke, sounding resigned. “I understand.” But there was an undercurrent of sadness in her voice that tugged at him. She moved away, tending to the flowers in the sprawling Pastures. She looked deep in thought.

“It would be … running away,” he apologized.

The goddess only nodded, bending to touch a wilting daffodil. It began to straighten, standing tall with new life. Does she do this for all of the flowers? He looked out over the rolling fields, wondering how far the garden stretched beyond his sight.

Bilbo let her be for a while, working at the tangle of his thoughts. Something she’d said puzzled him, and he waited for her to seem less preoccupied to ask. When she turned to him, as though sensing his question, he asked. “You said you ‘failed me’ because you couldn’t reach me. Why couldn’t I hear you? Because I wouldn’t sing?”

Because all my songs died with him? Best not to word it that way. Hush, writer brain, he chided. You’re being overdramatic again.

“Oh, no, dear one, I could have reached you through that,” she said dismissively, as if it was a ridiculous thought. “It was the ring you bore which kept me at bay.”

“My ring?” Bilbo repeated, bewildered, even as he felt the sharp stab of longing. Safety. Solitude. Blissful nothingness. Thoughts of the goddess before him and of the ghosts at his back slid away, cast into dark shadow by the glow of a golden band, its shine dominating his mind. He wanted it, n e e d e d i t. The craving was bone deep, scraping across his marrow.

Bilbo grit his teeth and thought of a similarly pretty bauble that had been laid to rest with Thorin in the cold stone of Erebor’s crypts, held his hatred for the Arkenstone out like a torch. The dark obsession retreated, and he found himself able to take a breath, unaware he’d been holding one in. When he looked up he found the goddess had halted her flower tending and was watching him. The hobbit felt a stab of unease, like the anticipation of fear, not fear itself. There was a wildness to her that made him think of panthers slinking through quiet forests. She had made more than hobbits, after all.

Seeing his discomfort, Yavanna relaxed her gaze, smiling grimly. “It is a dark thing. It saddens me that its rot touched you. You have withstood it well, Bilbo, which is no small credit to you. But while you held it I could not touch you, couldn’t voice my sympathies, nor ease your dreams.” One soil-damp hand reached over slowly to cover his own. “And you do have such bad dreams, dear one.”

He swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. She was right about that. He fell silent again, thinking, and she left him to his thoughts, mending flowers.

As he sat and thought, it struck him just what an opportunity he had been given. Here he was before one of the oldest beings in existence, someone who could answer any question he asked (if she felt so inclined.) It was a bit of a shock to realize that, scholar or no scholar, he had no pressing questions about the universe. Nothing came to mind. Being here told him what to expect from the afterlife. There was, it seemed, only one thing that he desperately wanted to know.

“You said before … you called it awareness. The something. The … humming in my head. What did you mean?” His throat ached. “What is it?”

She frowned, looking thoughtful. “I can’t say for certain. You feel many things that your kin do not. The borders of your own story, as you press against it. You feel my concern and love for you. The … humming, it may be your awareness of it all. Of me, of the story Vairë weaves, of fate’s presence in your world.”

“Vairë?” Bilbo frowned, trying to remember the stories. “The wife of Lord Mandos?”

She nodded. “My sister weaves the story of the world. All that has been is preserved forever in her stitching. The tapestry is vast. It may be that you feel its stitches. Where they were made, and when they come into being.”

He tried to wrap his head around that. He supposed it made sense, in a way. He remembered that troubling sense that he wasn’t supposed to be there when he visited the Argonath. Had he been ‘pressing against the borders of his story’ then? And the way the something warned him of danger, like wolves and orcs and creeping things with bare feet. Could that have been the goddess, trying to keep him safe? It was all a bit much. He’d been thinking of it as a single thing; an agenda that he was meant to stick to. But the actions of the Valar? It made his hatred for the something almost sacrilegious. And Lady Yavanna made it sound so … positive. Important. Like he hadn’t spent most of his life desperately wishing it would go away.

“I don’t suppose you could get rid of it then?” he muttered, eyes downcast as he anticipated the answer.

He heard the frown in her voice. “No. I am sorry, Bilbo. I couldn’t banish it from your senses any more than I could stop you from breathing. As long as you live, it will be a part of you.” There was a shift in her voice that made him look up quickly. She sounded strange, and she wasn’t looking at him. “I regret that the link between us, between this world and your own, causes you such pain.”

He opened his mouth to say something reassuring but found he had nothing to offer. What could he say? If he tried to make his hatred for the humming thread that pulled him where it saw fit sound like a minor thing, he’d be lying, and Bilbo suspected the goddess would know if he did.

“There is so much pain in you,” she said, and Bilbo startled in his seat. She seemed almost to be talking to herself. When she turned to face him, the hobbit was struck by her eyes. They were unutterably sad, a grief he couldn’t wholly understand. “Tell me. What can I do to make you happy?”

He gave her a watery smile and shrugged. “When I think of something, I’ll let you know first, milady.” He sniffed, quickly swiping a tear away with his thumb. He tried for a pleasant tone, reaching for the Baggins propriety that was so deeply bred into him, waving one hand in an airy, dismissive way. “But come, surely there are better topics to be had. We could speak of -”

He caught a glimpse of her face and fell silent.

“There you go again, trying to keep everyone from worrying about you. Do you think worry is so damaging that your friends and companions should be kept from it at all costs?”

He shrugged, looking away. That hit a little too close for comfort. “Why worry them when there's nothing they can do about it?”

“You don’t need to pretend with me.” She was rising, her skirts blurring momentarily into the flora around her. She reached for his hands, encompassing them. After so long only holding the hands of Big Folk, he was startled to feel her smooth hands were smaller than his own. Her expression was grave, and he braced for her to tell him what he’d feared he’d hear from Elrond. ‘Terribly sorry but there is no cure for a broken heart.’

Instead, voice ringing with quiet power, she said with great reluctance, “There is something else I can do for you, Bilbo Baggins. If you ask it of me.”

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he fought not to shift anxiously. His mouth felt suddenly dry. “What’s that, milady?”

“It would likely hurt as much as help, if not make everything worse. But we have exhausted the other options.” There was an air of frustration there that surprised him, but the hobbit realized it was not directed at him so much as at his circumstances. Those keen eyes raked through his as through looking for some reason to change her mind. “You are certain that your happiness died with those dwarves? That you will not try to live without their memory pressing into you at all times, and will not allow me to seal those memories away?”

He nodded slowly. That was about the sum of things.

The air around him felt charged, like the promise of thunderstorms. Even the flowers seemed to hold their breath, and no wind stirred the silence of the meadow.

Bilbo felt the moment her decision was made, because there was a very familiar tug just then, like a string pulling taut. Something, he knew, was about to change.

“Very well then,” she said, and the pronouncement rang through the silent hills like the toll of a great bell. “You cannot miss them if they are with you. Would you be happy if you had them again?”

Bilbo’s stomach summersaulted. Was she offering to let him into Mahal’s Halls? Somehow he managed to stumble through asking, tripping on his tongue. To really see the boys again, to see Thorin and Balin, not just shades he’d made up out of loneliness …

Then he saw her shake her head. “No, Bilbo. That is my husband’s domain, not my own. And I do not believe it would solve anything. I am offering you something entirely different.” Bilbo didn’t have time to feel disappointed. His heart was beating too quickly, and the humming in his ears was too familiar.

Two perfectly green eyes held his own. “I can return you to the time when a new stitch was made and the pattern of your story changed. When needle met fabric and Gandalf the Grey showed up at your door with the promise of adventure and elves.” When he seemed to not understand, she said slowly and clearly, “I can send you back.”

Chapter Text

“I can send you back.”

Over the roar in his ears Bilbo could hear that almost-song, could not possibly fail to hear it because the something was suddenly everywhere. That coiling sensation, so familiar and yet so strange because it was not confined to his head, was curling around him, squeezing at his ribs and his racing heart.

“I beg your pardon?” he spluttered.

She folded her hands, studying him intently. “I can send you back through time, replacing your old self with your current self. Your memories should remain intact.”

Disbelief choked him, wringing a strange sound from his throat. And as he stared at the goddess, his disbelief was bleeding into –

Hope. Almost painfully sharp as it filled the edges of him long cast in cobwebs.

“You’re offering me –” his breath was short – “a chance, a real chance,” later Bilbo would scold himself for sounding as though he needed to be assured this was something a deity could deliver – “to save them? To save – to save all of them?”

She was watching him closely. The goddess nodded once, slowly. “If that is how you wish to see it, yes.”

Bilbo managed to gulp down a breath of air, almost choking in his hurry to answer. “Yes! Yes, absolutely yes!”

“I was rather hoping that you would at least consider saying no,” she said drily.

Bilbo gaped. He knew that it was rude, and Bagginses must strive to be polite in all things, but she had taken him entirely by surprise. Speaking slowly to be certain he understood, Bilbo said, “The chance to fix everything. And you’re asking me to turn it down?”

“I’m asking that you consider, really consider, the impact this will have on you. You’ll face the agony again. The river. The orc. The dragon.”

A chill went through him.

“You care about them, do you? Good. Then you can watch them die.” The way the word ‘care’ had dragged heavily across the dragon’s tongue, as if Smaug were savoring the taste of irony, made Bilbo feel ill. He swallowed, then lifted his chin in determination. “I would face it all again, for them.”

“Think,” she urged. “Take the time to consider. I am in no hurry.”

Once again, his mouth ran ahead of his thoughts. He would have to work on this new, bad habit. “I’m afraid you’ll take it back,” he admitted with a small, tearful laugh.

Her expression shifted to something with more understanding, the urgency leaving her tone. “I will not. I could not do such a thing to you.”

‘She seems to really mean that,’ Bilbo thought, some of the fear pressing on his chest easing. He took a moment to compose himself, taking deep breaths. Finally, he explained, “Smaug will not be easy. How could he be? But it will be easier knowing that he can be killed.” When the dragon had burst from the molten gold, their cobbled-together hope for victory, he had been devastated. He’d thought that Lake-town would burn to cinders with Fili and Kili and Bofur and Oin in it, and that then the dragon would come back for them. Bilbo meant to change how that had unfolded too. His mind raced as he considered possible ways to save Lake-town, to make things go more smoothly.

‘I have so much thinking to do,’ Bilbo realized.

The goddess got his attention again by leaning closer to him, her arms resting on her knees. “Think of those you’ll be leaving. You have made a home among your Rangers. You’d be giving up –”

“Everything,” he agreed. Just the world felt like a betrayal of the love he’d seen in Meer and Boren’s eyes, felt in Kallan’s warm grip on his shoulder and Rion’s care that his cup never went empty. He’d be a stranger to Elrond and Erestor, to all the friends he’d made among the Bounders and the Rangers and the townsfolk who welcomed them between forays into the Wild. It would be truly awful, to see no recognition in Rion or Kallan’s eyes, to not see Meer or Boren’s eagerness for his company. As a civilian, he would be lucky to catch their passing interest. Friendship was almost certainly out of the question. Even Buttercup would not remember him. A strange ache filled his chest, a hollow feeling that felt very much like grief.

He was quiet for a long moment. “I won’t lie. I hate the thought of leaving them, that I could see them in this other time and they would only see a stranger.” He took a very deep breath, curling his toes in the soil beneath his feet. “But they would understand. And on the off-chance that I survive, I can rebuild. I know where to find them.” He offered her a sad smile. “Maybe they will meet a better Bilbo this time.”

“On the off-chance that you survive,” she quoted, straightening in her chair. Her lips were pressed tightly together. She seemed almost angry. Almost, because he imagined her anger would be a lot harder to misinterpret. Gods weren’t known for subtlety. “If you set out to die, Bilbo, you will. And if you die, your friends lose you.”

“But if I can prevent their suffering –” he insisted.

A hand rose to stop him.

“And do you not think that their futures would be poorer for never having known you?”

Bilbo could think of no reply to that. Instead, feeling off-kilter and beginning to doubt himself, Bilbo asked in a small voice, “Do you really think I could save them? All of them?” He swallowed around the lump in his throat as he thought of just how many fates he may be able to change.

Primula. Drogo. Little Frodo might never become an orphan.

His dead Rangers. If he could warn them about the demon in that pool, it might never catch so many of them in its maw. They need not be his friends to listen to a warning about a bunyip. And Prim and Dro need not know that he had lived through their deaths, only that they needed to avoid the Brandywine.

Balin might never try to retake Moria if he were not haunted by the feeling that he had failed Thorin. After all, if Thorin lived, Balin would be essential to running the kingdom. Thorin, he thought with a faint huff of laughter, was about as diplomatic as Buttercup. He would need Balin there to guide him. And Bilbo could leave letters – he had so many letters to write! – so that Balin would still learn that his venture would fail even if Bilbo was not around to tell him. Surely Balin would not go ahead with his plans then, not knowing that it would get dear Ori and Oin and all of the settlers who trusted him killed in that deep dark.

Not realizing that he was speaking the thought aloud, he mumbled, “I can give it my all and make every right choice and try – but will it be enough to save everyone?”

He jumped slightly when the goddess enfolded his hand in her own. She seemed concerned for him. “I think that very little could stand up to your formidable will, Bilbo Baggins. And I think if you thought to try, you could certainly save yourself.” There was a sadness in her eyes. “Consider doing that. If you can’t do so for yourself, then do so for me. Find a place for yourself in the future you’re so determined to create.”

Bilbo blinked at her with wide eyes. She surely couldn’t have that much faith in him. Bilbo certainly didn’t.

“It is important that you understand, though, that some things cannot be changed.” When Bilbo opened his mouth, alarmed, she hushed him. “I would not send you on this journey if it were not possible to change your story. Some things are within your power to change. But the loved ones you seek to save are already whole unto themselves. You cannot make their decisions for them, cannot live in their skins nor direct them like puppets. Some things are outside of your control, and that is not your fault.”

His heart violently disagreed. He could do it. He just had to do it all right.

“Say the dwarrow you love did not die in battle. You succeeded. That same dwarrow may die in the next battle, or in an accident, or of disease. And it would have nothing to do with you.”

Bilbo reluctantly admitted to himself that she had a point.

“Consider that,” she said softly. “Could you handle it if you did ‘everything right’ and then their life was cut short anyway?”

He flinched. It was a painful thought, that he might succeed and only buy them a little more time to live. He might – no, he would be able to save Kili. So once he had saved him, suppose the lad had enough time to court Tauriel only to die in a hunting accident or a winter illness or an unforeseen war, leaving her to fade as she had before? That would be so cruel. But, he told himself, taking another deep breath, it would be more than they had. And surely, if the worst were to happen, it would not happen to them all. Those who mourned would have others to lean on. Thorin might never recover from the loss of his nephews, nor they from the loss of him, but so much guilt could be saved if none of them died on Ravenhill. Bilbo had carried that guilt for years, had seen the same pain in Dwalin’s weathered face. Guilt like that ate at you until there was nothing left.

So even if he could only save them from that guilt, it would be better. It would be a bold lie to think that such an outcome would be enough, but it would be well worth whatever trials Bilbo faced to buy them a little more time.

“I believe so, Milady,” he finally answered the goddess. “It would hurt, to lose them again. But I would still be grateful for the time they had gained.”

She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “So be it, then.” Bilbo looked startled, wondering if she meant to send him back right that moment, but she only patted his hand, looking lost in her own thoughts. “It is… difficult, letting you go after spending so little time with you.” She almost seemed lonely. “It feels like I am abandoning you to chance. I wish that I could have done more for you. It should never have come to this, you know.” Bilbo did not know, but he was not inclined to argue with her. “I had hoped that Mithrandir might make himself useful when he wove you into his machinations. I was rather cross with the wizard for a time,” she grumbled. He hadn’t known goddesses could grumble. But then, he rather supposed they could do whatever they pleased, grumbling included. “He was meant to make you feel better, not leave you worse off than you were before. I considered shooing him off when he arrived at your door. I almost did. But he was thinking of the shine about you, and how you hungered for the wide world. And I thought just maybe he could be good for you, could fix what I could not.”

Her voice gentled, her irritation with the wizard replaced by wistfulness. “And then while you grieved, I hoped again that things might change. I thought perhaps, if you sang my Song…” Bilbo flushed, looking down. He felt quite bad about that. Here was one of the Valar wanting to help him, and he hadn’t so much as prayed since his mother died. And yet… he hadn’t had it in him, to sing her Song. He hadn’t wanted comfort; he had only wanted to be left alone.

The goddess shook her head with a faint smile. “But you never did before, so I could not expect you to then.” Her expression suddenly darkened. “And even if you tried to reach out to me during your new adventure, I would not be able to reach you. Not while you carry that beastly – thing.” Her voice dripped with revulsion when she spoke of it. If Bilbo didn’t know any better, he might even think the goddess hated his little ring. She seemed lost in her own thoughts before pinning him with a swift look. “Would you be willing to leave it in that cave, if I asked you to?”

Bilbo looked back at her regretfully. “I hate to disappoint anyone, Milady, least of all a goddess. But I’m going to need that ring if I’m to be the most use to the Company.” His head still spun at the thought of it, his ribs aching with the hope that filled his chest. Oh, to have them all together again, boisterous and bright and alive around a campfire. The thought of sacrificing anything, however troublesome, that might help keep them safe was unthinkable.

The hobbit actually felt her thoughts grow heavier. Her regard felt charged somehow, like her power had when she built the chair around him. “You worry so about what you may do for them. What about you? Will this make you happy?”

Bilbo was halfway through an instinctive dismissal of the thought, beginning to reassure her that he didn’t really matter, certainly not in the sheer scope of such things, that he was hardly a secondary concern – then he saw her expression. The words died on his tongue. He measured his words and, more slowly, replied, “Milady. If I do this well – and I mean to do this well –” he sounded so determined that she had to smile – “then happiness, as lovely as it would be to have all at once …” The hobbit trailed off, swallowed. He’d hungered for lasting happiness for far more than fifteen years, and he had come a long way seeking it. It wasn’t a trivial thing to him. Bilbo soldiered on. “Happiness comes at the end, you see? It’s in the result, not the process.” He smiled, sadness hanging off of him like a drenched travelling cloak. “And given the chance to save them, it’s simply not my priority at all.”

“It is mine.” The words startled him with their firm cadence. The goddess heaved a long sigh as she unfolded her arms, her lips pressed thin, eyes searching his. “And you’re quite certain this is the only way? That your happiness died with your dwarrow, and that you won’t let me dim the pain as it should have dimmed normally had you not been ill? To ease the memory’s sting that you might give this life another chance?”

Bilbo nodded, though he wished it didn’t make the goddess’s face twist like that. It bothered him, causing her distress. The urge to please was strong, wheedling, but he pushed it aside. She was asking, not demanding. So he was honest with her, more honest than he’d been with anyone in perhaps thirty-five years. “They’re part of me, Lady Yavanna. I’d rather face all the agony again than lose that part of me. If I can save even one of them, if I could give the boys more firsts before their lasts, I’d be more satisfied with such a life than I ever could be with this one.”

She was watching him carefully, as though he were the inscrutable one. It seemed odd to him that she should have trouble understanding any of her children. It was as though she kept expecting him to act like someone else. “But you won’t be happy unless you can save them all. Unless you believe you’ve done all you possibly could. And your mistakes will savage the happiness which you say will come at the end. You might be satisfied” she drew the word out with thick dislike, “but you would not be happy.”

There was a resounding silence. He didn’t deny it. Why bother when it was the truth? He’d just have to avoid that ending by being perfect, by failing at nothing. A tall order, sure, but training Boren to use a fork and knife rather than gnaw on a haunch of meat like an animal had been a struggle worthy of a song. He could handle it.

“There is another matter you must consider,” she said, her voice grave. “At your creation, a link was made between us. I failed to cauterize that link entirely, and though I cannot be sure, I worry that what small traces slip through already cause you great distress.” Bilbo sat up straight in shock, realizing she meant the something. “I cannot send your soul through time without fully reopening the link between us.” Yavanna pursed her lips. “I am not entirely sure what effect it will have on you. But with the link open, you might change. Your connection to me may affect you in strange ways. There are benefits. I would be able to reach you in spite of that wretched ring’s presence. You would never be alone on your quest. However, it would also allow me to walk in you, if you will allow it. Speak through you, move you as I wish. It is not something I would inflict on you without need,” she reassured him, though Bilbo’s eyes remained as wide as saucers. “But it opens new avenues for helping you … and, perhaps, for righting some wrongs beyond the scope of your quest.”

Bilbo blinked once, twice. Finally, he croaked, “Should I say no?”

The goddess sighed. “That must be your decision to make. This would be permanent, Bilbo. I could not close this link once it is fully opened. Only when you finally come to the Pastures to stay will you be free of my presence in your mind and soul.”

That didn’t sound so bad. He’d had far worse house guests. And the idea of not being wholly alone, though it presented some serious concerns, wasn’t an altogether unpleasant thought. He’d imposed loneliness on himself for a long time, as the wizard liked to point out.

Besides, the goddess could ask anything of him. If she had business on Middle Earth, who was he to begrudge her when she was giving him what he’d never dared to hope for?

“I agree,” he said simply.

A brightness entered her peculiar green eyes. Her hand squeezed his. “I am grateful. I want to be there for you if you are in need.” Her expression seemed to slip, revealing a deep sadness for just a moment. “I have failed you for too long.”

Bilbo found the thought of Yavanna watching him both unnerving and comforting. Having a goddess on his side when – if, he thought stubbornly – things went wrong would be a grand thing. If only she didn’t sound so dire about it all.

“I would be grateful for your company,” he assured her softly, daring to return the squeeze.

Her eyes held his for a long moment, perhaps searching for a lie. Then the corners of her mouth lifted. “I am glad.” The goddess patted his hand and stood, her chair vanishing back into the flower beds. “Now let us be on our way.”

Bilbo’s anxiety formed a lump in his throat. At the same time, his body sang with that need to move which he had felt for ages. Only this time – finally – he knew what he was running toward.

“I’m ready,” he said with all the steadiness he could muster.

The goddess offered her hand. “Then come with me.”