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Chapter Text

The Language of Flowers

There is a language, little known,

Lovers claim it as their own.

Its symbols smile upon the land,

Wrought by nature’s wondrous hand;

And in their silent beauty speak,

Of life and joy, to those who seek

For Love Divine and sunny hours

In the language of the flowers.

–The Language of Flowers, London, 1875

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Part One: A Letter of Green

Caras Galadhon, Lothlórien - 30 Forelithe, TA 2942 (Shire Reckoning)

Bilbo had wept for hours when first he saw the tiny oak sapling sprouting out of the rich, loamy soil that Lothlórien had in abundance and stretching its infant leaves toward the sunlight above.

His grief had watered the little tree, tears full of memory and love and longing slipping down his cheeks and falling gently to the earth where they seeped down until they reached the delicate roots of the precious sapling, nourishing it so profoundly that it doubled in size as Bilbo mourned everything he had lost. The oak would flourish in Lady Galadriel’s realm amongst her golden mallorns, and this caused nearly as much misery to swell within his heart as it did relief. He was pleased that his much cherished acorn would grow, but how Bilbo wished that he could have planted it in Erebor, could have tended the tree as he had once meant to, Thorin by his side, so that it grew into the perfect Cradle for their children - strong and true and the heart of the garden he had been promised by his husband when they had pledged themselves in Lake-town. The Battle of the Five Armies, as it was known, had shattered that dream evermore and there was certainly no hope of him sowing so much as a potato in the Shire in the time he had left, so Bilbo, in a fit of wild hope, had planted his acorn in the plot of land outside the grand rooms the Elves assigned to him, praying that the seedling, at least, would thrive, which was far more than he could say for himself.

In all honesty, Bilbo had neither expected nor desired to survive the destruction of the One Ring and its fell maker - as a point of fact, he had meant not to. What reason did he have to linger any longer in Arda than he absolutely had to when the thirteen he loved most, his true family, had been torn out of the land of the living by poisoned Orc blades?

Even before he had realized what precisely the useful little trinket that he had picked up in the Misty Mountains actually was, Bilbo’s fate had been sealed. No Hobbit had ever survived the loss of their One past the year’s mark - Bilbo would Fade in the manner of his people, as his mother had done upon the death of his father during the Fell Winter. Surely, he had reasoned, a quick death in Mordor, no matter how painful, was preferable to the slow period of wasting that would otherwise descend to steal his life away. At least if the fires of Mount Doom claimed him, Bilbo would be reunited with his beloved husband and the rest of his darling Dwarrow that much sooner.

Unfortunately, Gandalf had taken umbrage with that particular scheme and had, to Bilbo’s utter vexation, intervened in all of his meddlesome glory. With the assistance of the Great Eagles of Manwë Súlimo, the Wizard of the Grey Persuasion had plucked Bilbo from Sauron’s dominion without so much as a by-your-leave, rescuing him from the volcano’s wrath and ignoring - with a prejudice unmatched - that Bilbo had been perfectly content to bid Arda farewell in those fraught moments following the completion of his wretched mission. Then, when Bilbo had pitched a fit about his godfather’s unwanted intercession, Gandalf had shamelessly knocked him out with such strong magic that Bilbo had not regained consciousness until Gandalf had him quite securely ensconced within the famed healing halls of Lothlórien, under the diligent care of both the Lady Galadriel and the Lord Elrond.

The perfect place to rest, Caras Galadhon was exceptionally beautiful, of course, and the Elves who called it home - filled to the brim with gratitude for Bilbo’s courage and determination - were devoted to the restoration of Bilbo’s health, which had been poor due to the trials he faced during the Quest and then all but ruined as a result of his journey into the southern lands. Several months in Lothlórien had done his physical person a world of good, especially since the people of the Golden Wood were militant in regard to feeding him a proper seven meals a day, and it was not that Bilbo did not appreciate their attentions and deep concern, but the end was coming for him no matter how much effort they expended in keeping him alive. 

By the middle of the summer, even Gandalf could no longer deny that Bilbo’s spirit was steadily withering despite his own investment in preserving the Hobbit’s life. Soon, all that would be left of Bilbo Baggins of the Shire would be his funerary blossoms - the silvery white chrysanthemums that all Hobbits became when their lives were spent and they returned to Yavanna’s embrace - and the little oak sapling which Bilbo would tend to for as long as he still drew breath and would endure for Ages to come in the peace of Lothlórien. Soon, Bilbo would steal away to the far-off White Shores and then into the Halls of Mandos, where the heart of him was waiting for his Burglar to catch up.

“Tomorrow begins the three days of Lithe,” Gandalf spoke, appearing out of nowhere as was his wont and drawing Bilbo’s attention away from the tiny tree he was curled up next to, “The Lady Galadriel would have a grand celebration, as is customary for Hobbits, if it would please you, Bilbo.”

Bilbo managed a small smile, “I would be glad to give thanks for the Green Lady’s Grace with the Elves beside me; I would never wish to do so on my own.”

“Lithe is the time of Renewal, when your connection to the Green Magic that flourishes in the lands of Arda is reaffirmed, is it not? When last I was in the Shire during the festival of Lithe, all green life in proximity to Hobbits glowed emerald and gold and burgeoned because of the magic.”

“It is,” Bilbo confirmed, trailing his fingers over the little oak leaves. “Yavanna speaks to us on Lithe most often, as that is when Her influence is greatest. She uses the Language of the Flowers, which Hobbits are born with the ability to understand, just as all Fauntlings can speak rudimentary Hobbitish from the moment they Sprout out of their Root Cradles.”

“Perhaps the Green Lady’s Grace can heal the damage to your spirit,” Gandalf offered as he knelt beside Bilbo in the dirt, his countenance becoming a tad bit lighter than it had been for months at the idea of such a thing coming to pass.

“Gandalf,” Bilbo sighed, hating that he had to dash the Wizard’s hopes, because they were borne of a desperate love for his godchild, “If Lithe could prevent Fading, then no Hobbit would pass on in such a way. I’m sorry, but I cannot remain where Thorin is not. It is much the same for Elves, you know.”

“Elves can endure if they have a child to temper the pain of their One’s loss,” Gandalf exclaimed.

Gandalf was referring, of course, to Tauriel and the pregnancy that had stunned Thranduil into a silence that had lasted nearly ten full minutes when she had informed him and everyone else in the Elven-king’s tent that she was carrying Kíli’s child - Bilbo, Gandalf, Prince Legolas, Bard, and a handful of Elven guards had witnessed her declaration. Never before had a child of both Elven and Dwarven heritage graced Middle Earth, and the quick confirmation of Tauriel’s words by means of both Gandalf and Thranduil’s magics had been taken as a mighty sign from Eru Ilúvatar and Aulë Návatar. 

Though Bilbo was certain that Thranduil deeply loved the willful girl he had sheltered and helped raise and had already regretted his hasty banishment of her from his lands, the pregnancy had allowed him to save face and rescind the punishment immediately, so that he could safeguard Tauriel and her unborn child in the Woodland Realm; there had been a great deal of worry regarding the irascible Lord Dáin’s reaction to the continuation of Durin’s line when he was soon to be crowned King Under the Mountain. Tauriel’s pregnancy also kept Legolas from running off, as the prince had been inclined to do prior to learning of his adopted sister’s impending motherhood.

For his part, Bilbo had every intention of following the Elves, with or without their permission, and staying at Tauriel’s side to help her in any way he possibly could whilst he lingered in Arda. He had meant to ensure that Kíli’s precious child wanted for nothing, but the discovery of the One Ring had altered his plans in an irrevocable fashion. Once he resolved to march south and destroy the foul thing, Bilbo had been forced to accept that he would never meet his nephew’s child, but there was no way he would permit the Dark Lord to threaten them in any manner. This had not changed even once his tenure in Lothlórien began, as he had realized swiftly that he would not survive a trip to the Greenwood, no matter how the Elves and his godfather coddled him, for his spirit was much too weak to travel any further and Tauriel could not come to him, as heavy with the twins she carried as she was and still so deep in grief herself.

“But Hobbits cannot,” Bilbo reminded patiently, “And it takes a full year to Cradle a Fauntling. No magic but mine could keep a baby of my blood alive in a garden whilst they grew a body to protect their fëa and budding magical core.”

Gandalf slumped in defeat, “I know. It would be monstrous to Sow one of your Soulseeds now. There have been many times these past months when I’ve deeply regretted putting that mark on your door, my dear Bilbo, and I do so now, as well. I should be overjoyed at Sauron’s defeat, but I find that I am not pleased at all when you are the price to be paid.”

“I could never regret knowing and loving them, loving him,” Bilbo touched Gandalf’s hand with his own. “It is not forever, my friend. We will see each other again, one day.”

“That is less of a comfort, at present, when your life wanes a bit more with each day that passes,” Gandalf admitted and then straightened in determination. “If this is truly to be your last Lithe, then it will be a magnificent one. I can promise you this much, at least. There will be fireworks galore each evening.”

“I am exceptionally fond of your whiz-poppers,” Bilbo returned in all seriousness.

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Although he retired fairly early after supper, a strange fluttering in Bilbo’s core kept him awake for far longer than any respectable Hobbit ever would have been - not that Bilbo could be, by any definition of the phrase, considered a respectable Hobbit after he had stung spiders, taunted a dragon, been bloodied in battle, and defeated a Dark Lord. Sometime close to three in the morning, he gave up trying to sleep and flung his blankets away. When pacing did not help to soothe the sensation and assuming that the unease was a strange symptom of his Fading coinciding with Lithe, he found himself wandering outside to visit his sapling, hoping that being near it would calm his surging magic at least a bit.

The sight that awaited Bilbo stole his breath away.

In the hours since he had left it, a glowing garden had blossomed around his little tree, flowers and other plants sprouting from the earth but not from seed. It was a message from Yavanna to him, a letter of green life that evoked a relief so great that it sent him to his knees, a joy unmatched by any other he had ever known, and no small measure of unadulterated rage.

Ringing the infant oak were the bright pink blooms that had been used for countless generations to warn of great danger - rhododendron was beautiful to grow in your garden but sent to another it became a threat of grave harm and the Lithe before the Fell Winter it had sprung up in abundance as a divine warning - and the black dahlias dotting the lot of them sang of a terrible betrayal. 

‘Thorin Oakenshield has been betrayed and is in terrible danger.’

To the left of the ring, dragon wing begonias grew in tangled bunches with tall purple acanthus, crimson hollyhock, and yellow hyacinth. 

‘Beware the artifice caused by ambition and jealousy.’

Thirteen perfect zinnias were intertwined with vibrant orange snapdragons and sunrise marigolds to the right of the oak sapling.

‘You need not mourn for your absent friends, for you have been deceived.’

There was still more to read besides, as chamomile, red roses, white carnations,  honeysuckle, and more forget-me-nots that he could possibly count were wound together around a cluster of fireweed that grew staggered to form the shape of a solitary peak - and Bilbo felt so much hope then that his heart seemed as if it would fly from his chest in delight, because he knew well that fireweed racemes grew best in mountainous lands that had been touched by flame.

‘The ones you love wait for you in the Lonely Mountain.’

The tall stems of valerian growing together with bunches of sweet william and sprawling thyme gave him purpose.

‘Be ready, brave, and true.’

Somehow, impossibly, his Dwarrow were alive despite Dáin’s wrenching pronouncement in the aftermath of the Battle. Before he had known what the Ring was, Bilbo had used it to sneak into the Dwarven encampment to see the bodies of his family, unnaturally still in death as they had never been in life, and he had felt their lack of breath and heartbeats. But Yavanna was ever true, a champion of light and life, and that meant that Bilbo’s Dwarrow lived and needed him.

Bilbo barely had the presence of mind to leave a note for his godfather explaining himself before he threw on his Mithril coat, collected Sting, and shoved a number of useful things into the special rucksack that Lord Elrond’s daughter, Arwen, had gifted him while the Elves still had hope he would not Fade. Bilbo supposed that such hope had not been unfounded, in the end, and so the green leather pack that held more inside than the outside would suggest possible and, despite how much Bilbo stuffed into it, seemed almost weightless on his back was immensely beneficial to him as he raced northwest out of Lothlórien and trekked toward the Lonely Mountain.

Yavanna had not mentioned what precisely the danger his loved ones were in was, but it hardly mattered, as far as Bilbo was concerned, because he would see them safe and sound and then he would never let the brave, foolish, loyal, stubborn, wonderful creatures out of his sight again. If Bilbo had to tear down all of Erebor to do it, he would save his Dwarrow.

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Erebor - 23 Âfghelekvust, TA 2942 (Dwarven Reckoning)

Thorin loved and hated the dreams in equal measure.

‘Wake up, Thorin! Please, please wake up!’ Bilbo’s disembodied voice begged, over and over. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, hate me for what I did if you will, Thorin, but don’t be dead. Please, wake up, please! I love you. I love you. I love you. Please!’

The dreams came to him every three nights, without any deviation from the rhythm of their occurrence in all the months he had been held prisoner within the mountain, and they always began in the same manner, with Bilbo pleading for him to wake.

‘Come back to me! I need you, Thorin,’ Bilbo sobbed, and Thorin would feel, then, his husband’s gentle hands cupping his face. ‘Erebor is yours once more, we reclaimed the mountain, we took back your home and you cannot leave it again so soon. Please, Thorin!’

This was a memory, Thorin knew, because the Company had heard much of it and confirmed that it was no fantasy crafted of a desperate mind, and it just about broke his heart to bear witness to his husband’s grief on a regular basis. Dáin had boasted of how he had drugged the Company with Kurdunukhd, putting them in a death-like state and masking even their heartbeats, to perpetuate his proclamation of their noble passings at the hands of Orcs. Bilbo had come to see them for himself - risking his life to do so, as Dáin, knowing Thorin could hear and feel but not respond in any fashion, had taken great pleasure in telling him that he planned to have Bilbo executed for treason to “honor” his cousin - and Thorin’s husband had been, by means of said artifice, utterly convinced of their demise.

‘I'm sorry, Thorin,’ Bilbo repeated, as he claimed one of Thorin’s hands and raised it up so that he could cradle it against his chest, where it rested directly against the Hobbit’s frantically beating heart. ‘I'm so sorry.’

It hurt, Bilbo’s devastation, and Thorin hated himself a little bit more every time he had to hear the Hobbit’s apology echo in the dark, as if Bilbo had anything to be sorry for. Thorin was the one whose actions had been unforgivable, Thorin was the one who had allowed himself to be taken by the gold-spell, who had attempted to murder his husband over a Mahal-damned rock. For all that he had once fervently desired to possess the Arkenstone, Thorin now despised the gem utterly and would, if he ever got the opportunity, rend the stone and grind the pieces to dust himself and damn whatever consequences might come from it.

If he managed to escape the fate his cousin had planned for him, Thorin would spend the rest of eternity atoning for his words and deeds on the rampart; if he was fortunate enough to see Bilbo once more, in this world or the next, then he intended to gather his One up in his arms and never again let his husband go.

‘Bring them back,’ Bilbo implored next in a broken whisper. ‘Yavanna, please, I’ll do anything, just bring them back to me.’

Thorin remembered how he, too, had pleaded with his Maker, begging Mahal to give him the strength to fight against the strangling hold of the Kurdunukhd. If he could have but for a moment summoned enough energy to twitch the fingers of the hand Bilbo held, then what occurred after would have been so very different.

A loud thud cutting through the susurrus of the encampment had caused Bilbo to inhale sharply and then the Hobbit was pressing a reverential kiss to the knuckles of Thorin’s left hand. Bilbo lowered Thorin’s arm back down beside the Dwarf’s supine body and touched his lips to Thorin’s forehead, as well. He was missing from Thorin’s side for several long minutes - Thorin would only later learn from the others that Bilbo had been murmuring goodbyes to the rest of the Company during this time, touching his forehead to each of theirs in turn - and then he was back, cupping Thorin’s face again.

‘I will find you,’ Bilbo vowed to him, voice soft but still as unyielding as steel, ‘This is not goodbye. No matter what it takes or how far I have to go, if I have to defy the Valar and sneak myself into the Dwarven afterlife, I will find you, Thorin, I swear it.’ Bilbo had kissed him properly then, pulling away much too soon, ‘I love you, now and for always.’

Then Bilbo was gone and the misery that swelled in Thorin was greater than even losing Erebor to Smaug had been. It hurt every single time Thorin dreamed of that final hour with his husband, and he was certain that he was being punished for his failings. But he cherished the dreams too, because for a short time he got to revel in the lilt of his beloved Burglar’s voice, a gentle cadence like no other, and savor Bilbo’s touch, still silken despite months of travel - he would take the misery upon himself forever for the sake of those things.

The dreams did not end there, rather, that was the point where they became something else entirely, something that was certainly not a memory. Though all featured Bilbo, each one was different and made little sense to Thorin.

He would see Bilbo, but only Bilbo and nothing of the Hobbit’s surroundings, just his husband moving through an unnatural dark. At the start of the dreams, Bilbo had just walked in a single direction, pale and gaunt, for hours without end, and sometimes he had Sting in his hands, striking her at an opponent Thorin could not see and making good use of the sword forms that the Company had painstakingly taught him. 

Bilbo seemed more diminished each time Thorin dreamed of him, and then came the night, toward the end of Âfanak, when he was naught but a wraith. Bilbo had held his little magic ring in his hand for a moment and then, for reasons indiscernible to Thorin, furiously flung it away from his person and into the inky black that hid all else. Thorin had woken before he could gain even the slightest bit of context for that.

After that strange but apparently pivotal event, Bilbo appeared to be steadily recovering, gaining back the weight he could not afford to lose and then a bit more. He was no longer alone, either; though Thorin could not see whom Bilbo spoke to or hear anything of the conversations, it still eased him to know that there were others with his husband, taking care of him when Thorin could not. What did not ease, not even in the slightest, was the grief Bilbo carried with him, a sodden cloak weighing him down.

Óin, the most well-versed in reading portents, insisted the cyclical dreams that Thorin and his nephews had - for Fíli and Kíli dreamed about their Ones in an identical fashion, first experiencing the last moments they spent with them and then something new, every three days - were a sign from Mahal, though he could not explain what said sign was meant to represent other than that the three had Ones waiting for them. Balin, more pragmatic, had posited the argument that the dreams were a consequence of the king and princes being subjected to black magic. Bofur suggested that what they saw was real, as real as their memories, and that both Óin and Balin were partially correct.

Real or not, the most recent dream was alarming enough that Thorin inadvertently jerked himself awake, causing the chains that tethered him to the wall of his cell to clink against the stone, “Fuck.”

Dwalin and Ori were currently on watch, and it was the former who demanded, “What is it, Thorin?”

“Did something happen to Bilbo?” Ori worried, because he, probably due to his romantic nature, completely agreed with Bofur’s assessment.

“He’s running,” Thorin admitted, chest heaving as he tried to steady his breathing, “Faster than I’ve ever seen him run and for longer than should be possible. Something is very, very wrong, but I could not see what.”

“Do you want us to wake the others?” Dwalin asked.

“There’s little point,” Thorin decided, tilting his head back so that it rested on the roughly hewn rock behind him, even as he clenched his fists in frustration, “If the dreams are real then there is nothing that we can do to save him from whatever is chasing him, and if they are not… there’s no point.”

“He’ll be alright,” Ori soothed, correctly guessing that at least some of Thorin’s distress was caused by having woken too soon, “He’s Bilbo. Three days from now, you’ll see him safe and sound when you sleep.”

“And then never again,” Thorin muttered.

“Do not say that,” Dwalin barked, loud enough that several of the others stirred but did not fully wake, “Don’t you dare give up and let those fuckers win, Thorin.”

“You nearly got us out during the last new moon,” Ori reminded him with an encouraging smile.

This, admittedly, was accurate, as after five consecutive ritual sessions had gone off without a hitch, the guards’ arrogance had inflated to a truly noxious level. Graf and Kral, riding the high of their hubris, had thought to antagonize Thorin by taking his nephews from the cell to be tortured first. Of course, to do this, they had to pass Thorin by, and when they did, moving to grab Fíli, Thorin had lashed out in a desperate rage. He had managed to break all the fingers in Kral’s right hand and briefly got ahold of the dungeon’s keys, which he had meant to toss into the second cell, before Graf brought him down.

“‘Nearly’ being the operative word in that sentence,” Thorin retorted. “The guards won’t be so foolish again. They’ll take me for the ritual first because I’m closest to the door and my nephews are chained too far away from me to do anything to prevent it.”

They would try, regardless, Thorin knew. Even when he ordered them not to, Fíli and Kíli would tug so hard against the chains keeping them from stopping their uncle being dragged away that the cuffs would break their skin - Kíli’s wounds were always the worst, because he had to watch both his uncle and brother being taken from him. He truly did not deserve their love and loyalty, especially with how he had behaved in his madness; they had followed him into a fate worse than death and still their affection was unwavering.

“We’ll think of somethin’, Thorin,” Dwalin insisted, his tone brooking no argument.

Thorin, very tired, just sighed, “Aye.”

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Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Âfghelekvust [Moon of Good Health and Drunkenness - Ninth Month]
• Âfanak [The Arrival - Fifth Month]
• Kurdunukhd [Heartshade]

Flower Meanings - https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

• Oak [Strength; Stands for Thorin]
• Rhododendron [Great Danger]
• Black Dahlias [Betrayal]
• Acanthus [Artifice]
• Begonia [Beware]
• Hollyhock [Ambition]
• Yellow Hyacinth [Jealousy]
• Snapdragon [Deception]
• Marigold [Grief]
• Zinnia [Thoughts of Absent Friends]
• Valerian [Readiness]
• Sweet William [Gallantry]
• Thyme [Courage]
• Chamomile [Patience in Adversity]
• Red Rose [Deep Love]
• Honeysuckle [Bonds of Love]
• White Carnation [Innocent Love]
• Forget-Me-Not [True Love Memories]
• Fireweed [Resilience]

Chapter Text

Part Two: Black and Green

Rhovanion - 6 Afterlithe, TA 2942 (Shire Reckoning)

The first three days of travel got Bilbo all the way through the Greenwood undetected, Yavanna’s Grace allowing him to move at a speed that he would have never imagined was possible if it was not him doing so. On the fourth day, at the far border of the Elven-king’s forest kingdom, Bilbo had collapsed inside a hollow tree and slept for nearly a full day - his Fading had stopped in the very instant the Green Lady revealed that Thorin yet lived, but his spirit was still weakened and would remain so until he saw his husband alive with his own eyes. After he woke, as much as he longed to rush, he forced himself to keep a practical pace as he marched toward the mountain, because it would do his family no good if he expired before he could get them out of whatever horrible situation that they were trapped in.

Bilbo missed the Company even more knowing that they were alive and in trouble; not simply waiting for him to join them in the next world but being held captive by those whom they should have been able to trust implicitly. 

He wished to bask in the unremitting acumen Balin had in spades and to have Dori fuss over him endlessly, his eldest brothers providing the kind of care and guidance that he had not known he still needed until he had it again. He wanted to dance with Bofur and hear the bawdy jokes and songs that made Bilbo laugh as he had not since before the deaths of his parents. He wanted to share secret recipes with Bombur and trade stories with Ori, the Crafts of his two most gentle brothers being so in tune with Bilbo’s own hobbies. He wished for Glóin’s gruff fondness and for Óin's healing presence, both of them clever and fiercely protective in similar but different ways. He wanted to spar with Dwalin again, the loyal warrior with the heart of gold he hid from all but his kin, and spend long hours sitting with Bifur having delightful conversations in Iglishmêk, the Dwarven hand language which he had patiently taught Bilbo during the Quest. He wanted to watch Nori pickpocket a dozen corrupt Men in the span of a half hour without drawing their attention, as he had done in both Bree and Esgaroth during the Quest, to drink and play conkers with the only one of his brothers who could match Bilbo’s own skill in those amusements. He greatly desired to hear Fíli and Kíli call out ‘Idadith’ in the cheerful way they had always done, claiming Bilbo as their family long before any of the others had, to hug his exuberant nephews close, his Little Lion and his Little Raven. 

But most of all, Bilbo yearned for Thorin, was desperate to reach his husband, to hold and be held in return by the fearless, selfless King whose song had touched a wild part of him that had long been dormant, filling a void in his soul that he had not thought could be filled. The familiar weight of the beads in Bilbo’s hair and the weekly ritual of painstakingly rebraiding them into his curls with the beading loop Thorin had gifted to him for that purpose had been both a source of comfort and grief whilst he thought his husband dead - he had threaded the braids with thin white ribbons, just as he wore no color at all whilst in Lothlórien, as was customary for Hobbits in mourning. Now, running his finger over the Bead of Courting in his hair, a cylindrical gold piece marked by a depiction of Erebor, seven tiny roses, and the rune for ‘Ghivashel’ in Mithril, a promise of the home Thorin wished to create for him in the mountain kingdom, filled Bilbo with strength.

It had taken four days for Bilbo to travel from the Greenwood to the Overlook on foot, rather than by barrel and barge, a pair of his godfather’s moth spies fluttering after him the whole way at what they probably believed was a covert distance - Bilbo had spotted the bright pink and yellow rosy maple moths immediately, so he rather thought they should find a new line of work. Every so often he would catch sight of an assemblage of goldenrod growing along his path and Bilbo took the repeated presence of the tall, out of season flowers as the encouragement from Yavanna that they were meant to be.

Nestled at the base of the Lonely Mountain, in a natural crook of the River Running, the City of Dale had improved a great deal since Bilbo had last seen it, though perhaps not quite as much as he might have expected given the vast wealth of Erebor and its renewed status as a center of trade. The outer edges were still in ruins, but the center had been skillfully restored to its former glory and Dale’s famed golden bells gleamed in the sunlight.

Unwilling to shorten his route by detouring into the city, as he could not risk being noticed and detained when he was so close to his destination, Bilbo skirted it as swiftly as he could and then began the hour-long walk from Dale’s gates to the Mekhêmel, the grand doorway that had been painstakingly carved from the glimmering green granite of the mountain and led one directly into the Kingdom of Erebor. After three-quarters of an hour, Bilbo diverted from the road and continued on, following a remembered route that led him slightly north of the main entrance as he had absolutely no intention of entering Erebor by means of the gates, where it would be a simple matter for one of Dáin’s guards to spot him regardless of how quietly he moved. He needed not attempt such a thing when he had in his possession the key to the Secret Door, given to him, along with the map, for safekeeping by Thorin and never returned due to circumstances beyond Bilbo’s control.

He reached the shelf where the side-door hid with little difficulty - though he still maintained that the stairs leading to it had been made slightly too large - and was quickly confronted by a trio of blue-black Ravens.

“Melekun!” a Raven exclaimed and after a moment Bilbo recognized him as Roäc, the bird whom Thorin had introduced as Chief of the Ravens of Erebor following the death of the Dragon. “You should not be here, Melekun, for it is not safe! The new Dáin-Melhekh has a price on your head. Flee from here before you are caught; Thorin-Melhekh loved you and would never wish for you to face the Baruk.”

“Hello, Roäc,” Bilbo greeted. “I cannot leave. Thorin is alive and being held prisoner by Dáin somewhere within the mountain, along with the rest of the Company, and I must save them all before it is too late.”

Roäc stared at him, his black eyes two perfect beads of onyx, and then cawed, “You speak the truth, Melekun.”

“I would never lie about this,” Bilbo swore fervently. “Yavanna herself told me they live and that they need me.”

“Dáin has thus far refused to speak to me and my flock and has shunned the ancient alliance between us and the Khazâd since he assumed the throne,” Roäc revealed, shifting his feathers in anger. “Now, I know why this is. No one in Middle Earth can speak falsehood to a Raven.”

Bilbo blinked at that and then scowled, “Yes, I imagine that might make things difficult for him, considering how he has betrayed the Line of Durin.”

“The Princess Dís will arrive in four days’ time,” Roäc told him. “She comes to pay her respects at the tombs of her sons and brother. Much of the population of Ered Luin comes with her.”

“I cannot wait for her,” Bilbo admitted, “I dare not. I would beg of you, Chief Roäc, warn the Princess of what truly waits for her here. Tell her and all of Durin’s Folk that Dáin has imprisoned their King and his Company. Gandalf, Lady Galadriel, and Lord Elrond know the truth and are, no doubt, heading this way; they will help her if she lets them. I did not get the chance to warn Bard or Thranduil, however, and they should know as well if there is to be a fight so close to their own lands.”

“I will fly to the Princess directly and relay all you have told me, Melekun,” Roäc pledged and then cocked his head toward the other two birds present, “These are my sons, Rorc and Loär, they will bring word to the Ûn-Melhekh and the Khathuzh-Melhekh on your behalf.”

“Thank you,” Bilbo breathed. “Those pink and yellow moths over there, the ones doing a terrible job of hiding in the juniper shrub, they are my godfather’s pets, so please do not eat them.”

“We will not,” Roäc assured and then he and his sons took off, flying east together for a short while and then splitting up.

Bilbo watched them for a minute and then turned directly to the moths, whose wings drooped in distress, “Don’t look at me like that. You’re much too beautiful to serve as proper spies in these parts and you know it. Go flutter yourselves back to Gandalf and inform him that I have reached the mountain and will almost certainly be causing a diplomatic incident of epic proportions once I locate my Dwarrow.”

Finding the keyhole was a tricky bit of business, seeing as it was bloody invisible, but Bilbo remembered where it had been and stubbornly poked the key at the stone until it slipped inside the hidden lock. Once he had rescued his darling Dwarrow and eviscerated everyone responsible for harming them, Bilbo was never going to let them forget how dramatic they had all been on Durin’s Day when they had believed their one chance of finding the Secret Door was lost as the sun sank below the horizon. A door that only opened once a year was a very silly sort of contraption, indeed, and he was gratified, as it swung open easily when he pushed against the stone, to have proof that it could actually be used whenever it was needed.

Bilbo inhaled deeply and stepped inside the mountain, shutting the door behind him, “Yavanna, I beg of you, guide my feet to the ones I love. Aulë, please help me to help your sons.”

He had not taken more than a dozen steps down the sparsely lit passage when he noticed swirling designs beginning to form on the wall to Bilbo’s left. A depiction of ivy slowly crept across the grey-toned rock and wound its way down the corridor Bilbo was taking. It was certainly no proper plant, though it was green in color like it ought to have been, embedded in the stone as it was and gleaming exactly like his Mithril coat did. It was quite cool to the touch and Bilbo only let himself wonder at the sight of it for a few moments before chasing after the vine - an old symbol of fidelity, for it did not easily let go of that which it was attached to - letting it guide him deeper and deeper into the mountain and trusting that neither of the Valar he had entreated would lead him astray.

Bilbo followed the ivy for nearly half a day, lamenting the size of the Lonely Mountain more and more as the hours passed - the Greatest Kingdom in Middle Earth, Erebor had once been, and this, apparently, meant the largest too. It did not truly surprise him that he passed no others during the hours he walked, as Dáin had only brought a few hundred Dwarrow with him to battle the Elves when Thorin had called for aid all those months ago and, also, Bilbo rather suspected that the Stone King and the Green Lady were leading him down a path where he was least likely to be caught.

Finally, the ivy wound itself around a set of imposing metal doors and ceased to grow any further, sinking back into the stone until it vanished entirely. What did grow, across the breadth of the floor between the doors and Bilbo, was a warning in a multitude of engraved lobelias and glossy ferns.

‘Evil magic.’

Bilbo drew Sting from her sheathe without pause and strode to the doors, swift but silent. He opened one just enough that he could slip inside what appeared to be a large hall of some kind and then pushed it closed once more before ducking behind a nearby column that had once been painstakingly inscribed with hundreds of Khuzdûl runes and filled again with slivers of silver and sapphire.

There were three Dwarrow present, though not one paid Bilbo any mind at all as they were quite fixated on other things. The two larger Dwarrow had brown hair - one sported hundreds of thin braids and the other a few dozen thicker ones - and were seated across one another at a table beside a gated archway, where they played some sort of dice game with a pile of shining silver coins at stake. Both were larger than Dwalin and had on armor marked by Dáin’s crest, so they had to be guards, though their helmets sat off to the side, discarded whilst they enjoyed their leisure time. The shortest of the trio had silver braids so intricately styled that they rivaled Dori’s, wore clothes made of scarlet silk and golden threading, and was using a stepladder to hover over an enormous cauldron of solid gold that practically oozed black magic, the liquid inside nearly frothing over the rim.

Scattered all about the hall was a plethora of such paraphernalia that one might find in a healer’s domain, such as books and herbs and medical tools, but mixed in were various objects that were so obviously dark in design and function that Bilbo resolved to see the whole lot done away with as soon as he could feasibly manage it. Off to one side of the room was a raised ceremonial platform, heptagonal in shape and also inscribed with runes, and atop that was a silver pedestal, where a funny black crystal with vermilion streaked through it like lightning rested on a gray velvet cushion. Everything in the large space was tainted with varying degrees of malevolence; the cauldron in particular could match Smaug’s particular brand of filth.

“The King will be arriving in just over an hour,” the silver-haired Dwarf spoke to the others as he straightened himself, evidently convinced that whatever foul potion he was brewing was behaving as it should be. He stepped down off the ladder, “Fetch Oakenshield first, so that he’s drained of energy when the time comes to take his nephews; we don’t want a repeat of last new moon, when the bastard nearly ruined all my hard work because you idiots grabbed the blond first.”

“You did tell us that the order didn’t matter, Lord Frín,” the Dwarf with the thicker braids grumbled.

Frín, as that was apparently the Dwarf’s name, raised his chin so that he looked every inch the haughty aristocrat, “As far as the ritual is concerned, that’s true, Graf, but Oakenshield is the strongest of the three and viciously protective of the boys - you should have known better. Make sure you secure him to the dais properly so that he cannot fight the final bleeding while I get changed into proper garb for this evening's ritual.”

The guards obeyed, collecting their helmets and jamming them over their heads before the one with the multitude of thin braids pulled out a ring of iron keys and used the largest to unlock the gate. Bilbo watched them go, fuming all the while about what kind of Valar-damned ritual would require its officiant to fucking bleed Thorin like he was a pig at slaughter, and then crept after the would-be sorcerer, following the Dwarf into what had to be his living quarters as a tempest raged, unchecked, in Bilbo’s heart and soul.

He doubted that he could take on two Dwarrow at once if they knew he was coming, but Bilbo was absolutely certain that he could not fight three simultaneously and he could not count on Thorin or any of the others to help him in this. Dwarrow were a remarkably strong and hardy folk, made to endure like the stone they came from, but the Company had been imprisoned for months in a place that reeked of true darkness, Thorin and the boys had been drained repeatedly of their lifeblood, if Frín’s words were to be believed, and who knew what torments the others had been subjected to. Though he would have liked to first obtain a full list of their hurts and then take his time in meting out retribution for each and every one, Bilbo knew he had to act quickly if he wished to succeed in saving the Company, so he allowed his fury to crest.

He had killed Spiders aplenty, including Shelob, the greatest of Ungoliant’s spawn, countless Orcs and Wargs, directly and indirectly, and even a subversive Maia, but it felt different to thrust Sting through a Dwarf’s back and into his heart. That it was a righteous kill was not in doubt, for all that Frín possessing no knowledge of the danger he was in until it was too late - hardly anyone would fear death whilst undressing in their private quarters, after all -  made it nothing less than an assassination on Bilbo’s part, because any Hobbit would be able to tell with a glance that the vile Dwarf’s soul had been twisted beyond recognition by black deeds. He was discomfited, Bilbo acknowledged as he watched Frín gasp his final breath, because the fell creatures of Arda were born monsters, incapable of love, but Frín had not been.

Bilbo would, of course, suffer far more than a bit of unease to keep his loved ones from further harm, so he left the Dwarf’s body where it had crumpled against a solid silver wardrobe and rushed back out into the hall, ignoring the crimson rivulets dripping from Sting’s blade. The cauldron hung over a flame that was just hot enough to keep its contents at a simmer, Bilbo realized when he climbed the ladder to peer into it, and he nearly threw up at the sight. Bubbling blood filled the large pot, the color of red wine and made thick by the combination of magic and other ingredients - up close, he smelled the sweet, earthy scent of sage and the bitter-sweet, smoky aroma of poppies beneath the stench of black magic. Bilbo knew that Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli would have had to have been bled several times over to account for the vast quantity of blood before him, if it was truly all theirs, and he dreaded to think what Dáin and Frín planned to do with it.

The blood of the Line of Durin held a potent magic like no other in the world, after all.

Knowing he had little time in which to dither, Bilbo got to work, using Sting to slice a small lock of his hair away from his scalp, carefully avoiding the seven braids that framed his face - he was, briefly, grateful that his Dwarrow could not see what he was doing, for they would surely have pitched a fit at him for cutting his hair no matter how necessary the action was, like they had on the singular occasion he had attempted to do so during the course of the Quest. He held the honey blond curl pinched between his thumb and index finger and sang a soft spell in Greentongue, full of cleansing intent.

“Mam o fy nghalon, rhowch fi eich gras, er mwyn i mi ymlid y tywyllwch o'r lle hwn. Mae hud drwg yn bygwth yr hyn sy'n annwyl i mi, helpa fi i orchfygu'r nos a threchu ofn.”

As he chanted the final word, Bilbo allowed his hair to drop directly into the blood potion and then watched as the Green Lady’s blossoming, tenacious power worked its purifying magic on the foul substance. Starting from the point his hair had slipped into the mixture and spreading outward, the potion morphed from dark red into the cheerful clover green Bilbo loved so much, the green of the Shire’s rolling hills, the green of Bag End’s door. The fire petered out and the bubbling stopped as the liquid changed first into a single solid mass and then crumbled into a fine powder that smelled like grass often did following a summer storm in the kindly west.

From the enchanted soil sprouted thick clusters of fragrant dill that spilled over the rim of the cauldron and protectively encircled the bunches of sunset hyssop, bright yellow rue, and tall stalks of lavender that shot up in the center.

In normal circumstances, Bilbo would never have attempted such a spell with his spirit so weakened, for unlike Greentouch - which even the newest Fauntlings could call upon - spells evoked the heights of Green Magic when sung and most Hobbits could not do so alone even at their full strength. He had little choice but to try, though, and leaving the Shire had shown him what he was capable of, so he knew the spell would work. Magical exhaustion was a price well paid to sanctify the blood stolen from Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli, and although even Greentouch was now beyond him, he could still wield Sting in a fight, and she would serve him better in such an event than the gentle magic that encouraged green growth and endeared him to most animals. It was a wholly satisfying endeavor, as Bilbo thought it rather fitting that the ridiculous golden cauldron, intended for use in black magic, should serve as a flowerpot instead, full of the good green life that helped Arda to flourish.

Noise coming from the other side of the gated archway drew his focus, and Bilbo hopped lightly back to the ground so that he could duck behind another one of the hall’s many columns; he would need the advantage of a stealth attack. The gate swung open with a slight creaking sound and the guards reentered the room at a brisk pace, scowling as they dragged Bilbo’s husband between the two of them.

There were thick iron manacles around Thorin’s wrists and ankles, with short chains between both pairs; surely, they were there to prevent him from running and fighting with any measure of proficiency and Bilbo loathed the sight of them. He still wore the clothes he had donned for the Battle, the ones Bilbo had seen him wearing as Thorin lay still as death in the aftermath of that terrible fight, though they were naught but rags at present, stained with dirt and dried blood. He had lost weight and muscle mass, an indication that he had been all-but starved during his captivity, because even the meager rations during the worst of the Quest had been enough to keep Bilbo’s Dwarrow in fighting form. His beard had grown out to cover his jaw completely, since he must not have been allowed to keep it cropped to honor his fallen kin as he had for decades prior, but all of Thorin’s beads were missing from his thick ebony hair, including his Bead of Courting and the Mithril Beads of Betrothal and Marriage that were the match to the ones weaved into Bilbo’s curls. One of the guards, damn them to the farthest reaches of the Abyss, must have struck him when they collected him from whatever cell he had been kept in, because there was a small cut on Thorin’s forehead that was bleeding sluggishly.

Despite all of this, Thorin was every inch the proud and fierce warrior king Bilbo knew him to be, with no trace of shame marring his regal countenance.

Once far enough into the hall, the guards caught sight of the cauldron and stopped dead, mouths falling open in shock as they registered the plants blooming within it. In stark contrast to the other Dwarrow, Thorin did not gape at the flowers; though his eyes did widen in surprise, he recovered himself in seconds and his gaze turned hopeful as it darted about the chamber, eagerly examining every corner and crevice, searching, Bilbo recognized with a start and an ache deep in his soul, for him. Eight months apart, and Thorin still believed that Bilbo would come for him if he could.

Eyes burning with tears he did not have time to shed, Bilbo moved just enough out of the shadow of the column so that Thorin could see him and found himself quite pinned in place when the Dwarf finally did. For several long moments, Bilbo basked in the blue fire that burned in his husband’s eyes, letting it warm him from the inside out. He had not realized how much pain he was in until the pain was suddenly gone, driven away by the unadulterated love and surpassing relief in Thorin’s gaze, so accustomed to it he had become during their forced separation.

‘I love you,’ Bilbo mouthed, because he could never have stopped himself, and then used his free hand to count down, ‘Three, two, one.’

“What the fuck hap-” the Dwarf with the thicker braids, Graf, began to say, only for Thorin to cut him off by shifting his full weight, diminished as it was, without warning to bodily slam into the guard’s side and knock them both over.

Bilbo darted away from the column as the guard with thin braids transferred his attention away from the pot and toward Thorin, making use of the stepladder in order to gain the height he needed to jump onto the guard’s exposed back. He could never have pierced through the Dwarf’s steel armor, but Bilbo did not have to, because the hapless guard’s chestnut beard was braided up into his head hair, leaving his throat utterly unprotected. It was a remarkably simple thing for Bilbo to run Sting’s blade across it, slicing deep enough into flesh and vein that there would be no chance of recovery, no matter how the guard clutched at his throat to stem the flow of blood.

After the first guard had collapsed to the ground, crimson pooling beneath his body, Bilbo slid off his back and moved over to where his husband was struggling with the second. Thorin had managed to gain the upper hand over his own opponent and was using the short chain between his wrists to strangle Graf, though Bilbo could tell his husband did not have enough leverage to end the guard’s life and was stymied by the aforementioned loss of muscle as well. To prevent Graf from twisting away out of Thorin’s hold, Bilbo slashed Sting diagonally across the guard’s face, blinding him in his right eye and splitting his nose in half. The guard howled in agony and Thorin used the distraction as the opportunity it was, adjusting his grip on Graf’s neck and snapping it without pause, only waiting long enough to be sure the other was dead before he shoved the guard’s body away from him with force.

“Thorin!” Bilbo let Sting clatter to the gray stone floor and dropped to his knees beside his husband, who reached out at once with his bound hands and pulled Bilbo directly into the most ardent kiss he had ever experienced.

Everything else fell away as their souls reunited. The world ended in flame and was rendered anew, the Age of Darkness came to an inevitable close and the Age of Light dawned, bright and beautiful and full of all good things. No sooner did the first kiss end, then they were surging into a second, no less profound, and then a third. Whether each lasted a few minutes or an eternity, Bilbo did not know and certainly did not care.

“Bilbo,” Thorin breathed in between kisses, his tone reverent, “Ghivashel.”

“I’m here,” Bilbo promised, trying and mostly failing to catch his breath, joyful tears spilling down his cheeks, “I’m here, Thorin. I'm so sorry I ever left you, but until a week ago I thought you were dead! You and the rest of the Company. I saw your bodies, Thorin! But you’re here, you're alive.”

Thorin kissed him again, tender and sweet this time, “I’m alive, Kurdûh. What you saw was an illusion manufactured by my cousin and nothing more.”

“I love you,” Bilbo whispered against Thorin’s lips, the words coming out a shade desperate.

“As I love you,” Thorin replied.

“The others!” Bilbo gasped, shaking his head to clear it of the Thorin-induced fog that had settled upon it. “Dáin is on his way; that horrid sorcerer said so. We need to get everyone out before he gets here.”

Thorin straightened at that and nodded sharply, “Kral had the keys to the chains and to our cells.”

“I assume you mean that one,” Bilbo gestured to the Dwarf he had slain, before he rose to collect the key ring from the dead guard’s belt.

“Aye,” Thorin agreed.

The keys were covered in Kral’s blood, which was disconcerting but rather inevitable given the inimical circumstances leading up to his death. Bilbo wished he could pull a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe them off, but he had quite forgotten to pack one in his rush, so he cleaned them on his shirt before kneeling back down to remove the chains from his husband’s person.

Bilbo first unlocked the cuffs around Thorin’s ankles, which had been more less protected by his thick leather boots despite how tight they were fastened, and then immediately removed the manacles as well, hissing in furious commiseration when he saw the dark bruises ringing Thorin’s wrists, “I am going to tear your cousin to pieces and use him for fertilizer.”

“Not if I get to him first,” Thorin returned, seemingly as composed as he ever had been in Bilbo’s presence, and then took advantage of his arms being freed, wrapping them around the Hobbit so that he could hold him close. Bilbo clung to Thorin in return, resting his head against his husband’s chest so that he could hear Thorin’s steady heartbeat. “I’m alright, Ghivashel.”

That was so obvious a lie that Bilbo could not find it in himself to muster up even a shred of indignation for the falsehood, especially since it was the manifestation of patent desperation. As if Thorin could will himself into being healthy and hale if he told others often enough, and with enough conviction, that he was totally fine and there was no need to fret.

“The others,” Bilbo repeated, pulling out of the hug reluctantly and standing. He grabbed Sting off the ground and used his already soiled shirt to clean her blade before sheathing her. Thorin had gotten to his feet at the same time Bilbo did and seemed to be fighting the urge to draw the Hobbit back into his arms. Bilbo quickly snagged his husband’s hand with his own, tangling their fingers together and was gratified when Thorin held on tightly, “I have medicines and other healing supplies from Lothlórien in my pack; once the Company is free and it’s safe to do so, we’re using them.”

“As you wish,” Thorin acquiesced easily, which was, of course, highly suspicious because Thorin was annoyingly stubborn about medical care in general and downright obstinate where anything Elven in nature was concerned. Before Bilbo could interrogate his husband regarding this radical switch from intractable to obliging, Thorin continued, “Did the sorcerer, Frín, leave to escort Dáin back here?”

“No,” Bilbo denied, tugging Thorin toward the gateway, “You don’t need to worry about him, my love. He’s dead too.”

Thorin stopped walking to demand, “What?”

Bilbo frowned at him, startled by Thorin’s strong reaction to the news, “I stabbed him in the heart while the other two were away fetching you, before I purified the potion. I’m sorry if you did not wish for me to kill him, Thorin, but his soul had been corrupted beyond repair with black magic - not even Yavanna’s Grace could have cleansed it.”

“I’m not upset that he’s dead,” Thorin assured quickly, moving forward again, “Though I hate that you had to kill at all. I’m simply astonished - the enchantments he used on himself made it impossible to kill him with anything less than a direct blow to the heart and he wore special tunics lined with runes in golden thread that were meant to prevent others from striking true.”

“Well, I suppose I got lucky then,” Bilbo shrugged, unlocking the gate, “I killed him while he was in the middle of changing his shirt.”

“Indeed,” Thorin’s voice was amused, and he wore a wry smile as they stepped through the archway. “If your particular brand of luck could be bottled, my Burglar, it would sell for a veritable fortune in every corner of this world.”

Bilbo rolled his eyes at that, “My type of luck woke a sleeping Dragon, if you recall.”

“And yet, you escaped from the beast entirely unscathed and then distracted it so well in the Gallery of Kings that I was able to slay it.”

Bilbo remembered that well enough - Thorin doing his best to drown the last of the Great Drakes in a pool of molten gold and managing to weigh the beast down just enough that he was able to send a lance of Shadow Mithril, found by chance in the treasury, to pierce through the worm’s weak spot.

“Tell me, dear heart,” Bilbo questioned then, “What was Frín’s potion supposed to do? I could sense its malice - that is why I evoked Green Magic to chase the black away - but not its intended function. The sorcerer mentioned that you and the boys were to be bled for a final time when he sent the guards to bring you to the hall.”

Thorin hesitated before answering, in a manner which Bilbo knew from experience stemmed from his husband’s desire to protect him from all dark and terrible things rather than mistrust, “You remember how I told you that Durin is known as the Eternal King, because his destiny is to be reborn and rule, time and again?”

“Durin I was Aulë’s firstborn,” Bilbo confirmed, “The son he crafted from stone and defied Eru to breathe life into, for he loved him so much. Only Durin and those of his line can rule as kings amongst the Dwarrow.” Bilbo huffed then, “Though, at present, there are five Dwarven kings and two queens, because the Archlords of the other clans decided to be disloyal sods when Moria was taken by the Balrog.”

“Yes,” Thorin agreed, taking a deep breath before admitting, “Frín intended to put an end to Durin’s cycle of rebirth, to unmake him with black magic, and set Dáin up as the Eternal King in Durin’s stead.”

“That’s possible?” Bilbo asked, horror at the very notion coursing through him.

“By ritualistically bleeding three Sons of Durin seven times during seven consecutive new moons,” Thorin revealed haltingly. “Dáin would then bathe in the resulting potion as Frín sundered our souls in a dark rite. Tonight was meant to be the last of the bloodtheft rituals. You saved us from meeting such a fate, Khajmel.”

Bilbo’s grip on Thorin’s hand tightened instinctively and his body grew very cold, despite the walking furnace beside him, as he realized just how close he had come to losing his husband and nephews forever - if their fëar had been riven as Dáin and Frín intended, then they would never have passed into the Halls of Mandos but rather ceased to exist entirely. If Yavanna had not spoken to him in her special way on Lithe and he had, subsequently, Faded… he would have been existing in a nightmare worse than all the images the Ring used to torment him. 

Bilbo pressed close to Thorin’s side, quelling the intense distress minutely by reminding himself that Thorin was alive and striding next to him. Dáin would pay, as his pet sorcerer and the guards had, for the affront with his life, whether Bilbo took it or Thorin did. Bilbo would tolerate no threat to any of his Dwarrow remaining in the world.

“They cut you and the boys six times?” Bilbo finally calmed enough to ask, once he had wrestled the anger and dread spiraling like a hurricane in his heart into a far more manageable squall.

“They did not need to,” Thorin disclosed carefully. “The crystal that was on the silver pedestal is a Habandamâmnûlukhaz, a Blood Moon gem that was fashioned by perverting the sacred art of crafting Habanûrzudaz. It can harvest blood from a person if held against their chest and activated with a dark spell; the collected blood is then spilled into a designated vessel, like the cauldron. The Habandamâmnûlukhaz prevented the blood taken from being tainted by any impurities and negated the possibility of us dying before the designated time because of an accident during the rituals.”

The gems of the sun were a feat of Stone Magic that only Dwarrow who had honed their Stonesense to a formidable degree and had mastered all seven levels of the Stone Arts, like Thorin, were capable of. They were created by catching undiluted sunlight inside diamonds at noon on the summer solstice - which coincidentally coincided with Mid-Year’s Day, the second of the three days of Lithe. A true master of the craft could create perhaps two dozen at a time, if they had all the proper equipment and worked without pause, but such individuals were exceedingly rare and so the stones were quite valuable. Once created, they could hold sunlight and light a sizable area for hundreds of years unless used for healing purposes, as they were nothing less than a boon to a healer trying to save a patient laid low by one grievous injury or another. If Bilbo adored any gem, it was Habanûrzudaz, for standing beneath one felt nearly as wonderful as basking in the sunshine did.

“Why do I suspect, Khaeluh, that their use of such a crystal actually made their fell ceremonies so much worse than if they had used a knife.”

Thorin sighed at him, “Because you are too perceptive by half, far more than you ought to be to avoid coming to such conclusions, Lasleluh.” Then he pressed a kiss to the top of Bilbo’s head, “Though I love your cleverness and you for it. It was… not a pleasant experience, by any means, but we endured it.”

“Thorin,” Bilbo rejoined plaintively.

“Please, my Burglar,” Thorin murmured, “Please allow me to shield you from this, at least.”

Bilbo allowed it, though he dreaded to think what Thorin’s reaction to his journey south would be and resolved to put off telling him for as long as was feasible. Until they had secured the kingdom, once again, it was best to avoid causing a meltdown that would surely put to shame Thorin’s vehement displeasure at discovering Bilbo could not swim after their escapade with the barrels and a frighteningly swift-moving river - Bilbo maintained that Thorin was the one who had not bothered to verify if Bilbo could do so before agreeing to the scheme, so the Dwarf had no business being upset with the Hobbit over it. If Bilbo could get his hands on some of the raspberries that grew wild on the slopes of the mountain, he could ensure that Thorin was properly plied with his favorite tarts before he casually brought the trip up in conversation.

“Did Dáin take your beads?” he asked softly, instead.

“Aye,” Thorin divulged with a grimace. “He took all of our beads, those of great consequence and the purely ornamental alike, while we lay drugged with Kurdunukhd and were unable to fight back. He meant to debase us in as personal a manner as he could. I do not know what he then did with them all.”

Bilbo was sure that Dáin’s cruelty had inflicted just as much humiliation as intended, “We’ll find them.” 

“If my wretched cousin has not had them melted down,” Thorin said bleakly. “Which I would not put past him.”

“Let us hope he has not,” Bilbo replied. “What is Kurdunukhd?”

“It is a magical tincture that paralyzes the one who drinks it, leaving them in a state where they can hear and feel, but cannot move or speak. Dáin forced it down our throats as the Battle was ending,” Thorin explained. “It is called Heartshade, because it masks all life signs in the person who consumed it, making it seem as if they are dead. The brewing of it is quite illegal.”

“You heard me tell you goodbye,” Bilbo realized.

“I heard you promise to find me,” Thorin countered. “I have doubted myself these past months, but never once did I doubt that you would do everything in your power to come back to me.”

It was then that Bilbo’s ears caught the first thunderous thunking noise, followed in short order by a second that was even louder, and then another, as if something heavy was being repeatedly slammed against a wall.

“Oh dear!” Bilbo exclaimed as understanding struck him.

He was not sure which of them increased their speed first, but he and Thorin were abruptly sprinting the final distance between them and the rest of the Company.

“Again!” Bilbo heard Dwalin bellow, and he and Thorin rounded the final corner in time to see the ten members of the Company who had been locked together in a single large cell rush as one toward the door and slam into it in full force, Fíli and Kíli watching their progress intently from where they were chained to one of the walls in the smaller cell.

“That,” Bilbo announced loudly, crossing his arms in disapproval, “Is a truly excellent way to earn spectacular bruises and break bones. Do stop with that nonsense this instant.”

For a long moment, there was nothing but stunned silence as Bilbo’s reckless and obstinate, but oh-so-dear, Dwarrow stared at him and Thorin, and then the world erupted into pandemonium.

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Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Kurdunukhd [Heartshade]
• Ghivashel [Treasure of all Treasures; ‘Beloved’]
• Idadith [Little Uncle]
• Iglishmêk [Dwarven Sign Language]
• Mekhêmel [Great Gates]
• Melekun [Hobbit] 
• Melhekh [King]
• Baruk [Axe]
• Khazâd [Dwarrow]
• Ûn [Man]
• Khathuzh [Elf]
• Kurdûh [My Heart]
• Khajmel [Gift of all Gifts]
• Khaeluh [My Great Wolf]
• Lasleluh [My Rose of all Roses]
• Habandamâmnûlukhaz [Gem of the Blood Moon]
• Habanûrzudaz [Gem of the Sun]

Translations (Greentongue)

• Mam o fy nghalon, rhowch fi eich gras [Mother of my heart, grant me your Grace]
• Er mwyn i mi ymlid y tywyllwch o'r lle hwn. [That I might chase the dark from this place.]
• Mae hud drwg yn bygwth yr hyn sy'n annwyl i mi [Fell magic threatens that which I hold dear]
• Helpa fi i orchfygu'r nos a threchu ofn. [Help me conquer the night and vanquish fear.]

Flower Meanings - https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

• Goldenrod [Encouragement]
• Ivy [Fidelity]
• Lobelia [Malevolence]
• Fern [Magic]
• Sage [Immortality]
• Poppy [Eternal Sleep]
• Dill [Powerful Against Evil]
• Hyssop [Cleanliness]
• Rue [Grace, Clear Vision]
• Lavender [Purity]

Chapter Text

Part Three: Pressure Points

The Hall of Earth, Erebor - 1 Âfkidhuz'abad, TA 2942 (Dwarven Reckoning)

Thorin and Bilbo split the keys between them without any sort of discussion, so that Thorin could free everyone in the larger cell and Bilbo could tend to their nephews. Though all wore manacles, most of the Company had not been chained to any walls, as their cell door had never again been opened once they had been locked inside all those months ago and so there was no risk of them escaping from it by overwhelming the guards. This meant that they flooded out of it as soon as Thorin had twisted the key in the lock and yanked the door of thick iron bars open.

“I told you so,” Dwalin grinned smugly, clapping Thorin on the shoulder once his manacles had clattered to the floor and been kicked away.

“You can thank Bilbo for our freedom, not me,” Thorin rejoined, as he freed Bifur’s hands and then moved to Nori’s. “He took out Frín and Kral all on his own, and was the only reason I managed to kill Graf.”

The others were mightily impressed by this, as they should have been, but they held themselves back from more cheering - it was a wonder all of Rhovanion did not know of their escape, such had been the volume of the cacophony that sounded in the wake of Bilbo’s exasperated scolding - because the would-be object of their praise was rather too preoccupied to appreciate any sort of veneration, having just discovered the rib Fíli had broken during the last new moon. The injury had been poorly tended to by their captors and the lack of proper nourishment meant it had not healed as it ought to have, so instead of applauding Bilbo’s heroics, the Company was listening in awe as the little Hobbit provided a very descriptive explanation of precisely how one could turn a body into proper fertilizer for a garden. This heated diatribe was occasionally punctuated with what were obviously curses in Hobbitish, and if any member of the Company was taken aback by either the novelty of their normally polite to a fault Burglar’s foul language or the uncharacteristic viciousness of his rant, they wisely kept it to themselves. For his part, Thorin supposed that even the gentlest of creatures had a limit and being forced to spend months mourning his loved ones only to, somehow, discover that they were actually alive and imprisoned, was Bilbo’s.

“I’ll be very glad to help you with that, Idadith,” Fíli announced, as he and his brother burrowed against the Hobbit, who held them tightly in his arms in return.

“You will do nothing of the kind until after your rib is healed,” Bilbo contradicted at once. “You will rest and recover, Little Lion, and I will make you as many maple biscuits as you like for behaving.”

Either Fíli decided that discretion was the better part of valor or, more likely, he was tempted into obedience by the promise of sweets, because he conceded quickly, “Whatever you like, Idadith.”

“I want biscuits too,” Kíli whined into Bilbo’s shoulder, with a lingering bit of childness that Thorin quite despaired of, but Bilbo had always found absolutely charming and shamelessly encouraged from the first; strangely, though, in that moment, Thorin was pleased to learn it had not been wholly eradicated, despite all his youngest nephew had been forced to endure.

“And you’ll have them,” Bilbo promised, petting Kíli’s hair with an indulgent smile, “The blueberry lemon shortbread that you’re so fond of, Little Raven.” Bilbo’s smile faded, “But first, we must get out of here. Dáin is on his way, and this shall all be for naught if he catches us before we can get away.”

“He only ever brings four guards with him to the Hall of Earth for the rituals,” Thorin told his husband, and then made his voice a little teasing, “We can take the five of them easily enough, even if our only weapon is your letter-opener. We have the only key to the gate, so they cannot lock us back in.”

“Oh!” Bilbo carefully detached himself from Fíli and Kíli, who pouted at him for it, so he could stand and rifle through the little satchel he had been carrying on his back. “I nearly forgot I brought this.” And then, impossibly, he pulled Orcrist out of the much too small bag and walked over to offer the sword to Thorin quite unceremoniously, as if he were doing nothing more remarkable than passing the butter during supper, “Here you are, darling.”

“Nadadith, how in Durin’s name did you fit that in there?” Glóin questioned with no small measure of confusion, as Thorin nodded in thanks and accepted the blade.

“Magic,” Bilbo said, succinct and a bit evasive, which Thorin suspected meant that his husband did not wish to admit that the pack, its emerald-colored leather stamped with a pattern of leaves favored by Elrond’s House, had come to him from the Elves, probably because he wanted to stave off a half-dozen indignant tantrums.

“How do you even have Orcrist?” Bofur wanted to know.

“I… I overheard Dáin say that he was going to melt her down after the Battle, because he wasn’t going to allow a sword made by Elves to accompany Thorin to…” Bilbo’s breath hitched a bit in distress, “To the tombs. I wasn’t going to let that happen, so I burgled it from his tent.”

“Well done, Nadad,” Nori praised, throwing an arm around Bilbo’s shoulders and giving him a comforting squeeze. “You couldn’t know it, but Dáin threw an absolute fit over its disappearance and that was highly entertaining for us.”

“Oh, aye,” Bofur agreed with a chortle, “He was half-convinced that the sword was haunted, because the guards in his tent swore to Mahal that she simply vanished before their very eyes. So, thanks for that.”

“I’m glad to have been of service,” Bilbo replied in a dry tone.

“Come,” Thorin beckoned, taking Bilbo’s hand in his own again, “The sooner we deal with Dáin and his lot, the sooner we can set all else to rights.”

The Company followed where he led, as Thorin had never doubted they would, but only stayed quiet for about ten seconds, as Kíli, having sidled back up to Bilbo with his brother not far behind, restarted the conversation by asking, “How did you figure out we were alive, Idadith?”

“Do you remember what I explained of Lithe, during our stay in Rivendell?” Bilbo responded.

“Lithe is the most important of your festivals,” Kíli answered, “It’s the time of Renewal for your people, and Midsummer's Day is the anniversary of when Yavanna first woke the original eleven Hobbit families during the First Age.”

“You and the plants around you glowed for three days straight, and you were full to bursting with Green Magic,” Fíli recalled.

“Aye,” Balin added with a huff, “And the Elves in the valley wouldn’t leave him alone for anything. Quite a nuisance they were.”

Elves looked at Hobbits and saw walking, talking flowers they could coddle on the least of days, and so loved Hobbits like they loved their green-boughed trees, but it was never more evident than during Lithe that the Green Lady’s sons and daughters had more in common with plants than with any other of the free peoples in Arda. For three full days, half of the Elves of the Last Homely House had trailed after Bilbo like overlarge ducklings, tripping over themselves to fulfill his every wish and doing all they could to keep his attention on them rather than the Dwarrow. This had, as might be expected, infuriated every other member of the Company besides Thorin, because they had already decided that Bilbo - fussy and retiring though he was - was theirs; Thorin, still deep in denial at that point, had publicly pretended not to care about what was going on with the Hobbit while actually caring quite a lot in secret.

“Most assuredly they were,” Dori agreed from the back of their procession. “I feared they would try to steal him away!”

“Right,” Bilbo stretched the word out and then he sighed. “Anyway, on Lithe, Yavanna will sometimes speak to Her children using flowers and plants, in a manner all Hobbits can understand. When Lithe began eight days ago, almost nine full days now, She grew a collection of blossoms that told me you were alive and trapped here, so I came as quickly as I could.”

If Thorin had ever thought so highly of himself to imagine what Yavanna might think of him, he would have believed the Green Lady quite displeased with his person.

She had given him Bilbo, painstakingly grown such a beautiful soul to be the perfect match to the one Mahal had forged to bring Thorin’s body to life, and the Dwarf had been nothing less than horrified to discover his One in the gentle, unassuming Hobbit behind Bag End’s green door. For how was Thorin meant to shield someone so soft from all the dangers of the world when he himself had so many enemies? Bilbo’s initial refusal to come on the Quest had been gratifying, because if Bilbo stayed in the Shire then he would be safe, but then Bilbo had changed his mind and Thorin’s fears had made an ass out of him for the first portion of their journey. How could a Hobbit who knew nothing of the world beyond the borders of the Shire rule at Thorin’s side? Bilbo had seemed timid and easily led in the beginning, excepting the times when he had complained about the everyday harshness that was a Dwarf’s reality, and been clearly disconcerted by Dwarven customs in a way that did not bode well and certainly gave Thorin no peace of mind.

Bilbo had gone on to prove Thorin’s folly in doubting the will of the Stone King and the Green Lady a dozen times over, saving the Company time and again - standing fearlessly between Thorin and the Pale Orc, cutting them loose from the Spiders’ webs, freeing them from the Woodland Realm, outwitting a Dragon, and giving away his portion of the treasure without a thought for himself to name a few of those times - and caring for each of them in a hundred little ways that proved his devotion. Perhaps, Thorin could have been forgiven for his rather impudent shortsightedness, if not for what he had done to Bilbo on the Battlements. Surely, in the wake of those heinous actions, he would have assumed that Yavanna must despise him, and he would not have blamed Her, in the slightest, had She kept Bilbo from him forever as punishment, though it would have destroyed him utterly.

And, yet, She had sent Bilbo to save them, and Thorin’s beloved Burglar had rushed to Erebor without delay.

“So, Yavanna grew a bunch of little flowers in the shape of words?” Glóin asked, bemused by the very notion, “Or did they form runes?”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” Bilbo denied. “The flowers themselves were the message. The particular ones the Green Lady chose to grow, the number of them, and their placement in relation to the others in the arrangement wove a living letter from Her to me.”

“How do particular flowers tell one anything?” Dwalin questioned.

“Different flowers mean different things,” Ori piped up. “Bilbo told me when we were in Lake-town that red roses and honeysuckle, his favorites, mean ‘love’ and ‘love-ties’, respectively, and when they are put together in a bouquet or wreath, they are a promise to love someone forever and a pledge of marriage. Right, Bilbo?”

“Just so,” Bilbo acknowledged, sending a smile back in Ori’s direction. “The Language of Flowers is as sacred to Hobbits as Greentongue is, though we use it far more often than we do the language of our high magical arts and are taught it even as we are Cradled.”

Thorin realized then that Bilbo must have used a Greentongue spell to cause the cauldron to sprout plants, healing the dark magic within it as he had healed Óin's hearing at Beorn’s with a cup of jade-tinted tea, after the Dwarf had lost his ear-horn in the tunnels of the Gorgûn-hai, and then restored Bifur’s ability to speak Westron with a second serving of the same brewed drink. It had been wondrous to behold, Bilbo’s indigo eyes flashing emerald as he sang his spell over the drink, and then Óin and Bifur’s happy tears when they had been made well. Bilbo had later admitted to them all that he would have healed the two sooner, if he had thought his magic welcome, but he been raised to be very cautious about using the heights of his Green Magic around those of other races - the Men who Hobbits interacted with most often could be hostile where any magic was concerned, as they could not sense intent in any individual spell as Hobbits could, and some had even tried to use a Hobbit’s magic for their own evil purposes, though Green Magic could not actually be corrupted in such a way.

“What flowers did the Green Lady grow then, laddie?” Óin asked. “Or is such communication meant to be only known to you and the Amadel?”

“It is not a secret,” Bilbo assured. “There were many flowers, but among them were zinnias, which are commonly used as a symbol for one’s friends whom one has been parted from, and there were thirteen of them planted with snapdragons and marigolds, which mean ‘deception’ and ‘mourning’. This combination told me I had been lied to about your deaths. Fireweed means ‘resilience’, because it blooms so well in fire-touched lands, but it was the way in which it grew that told me you were here in Erebor, because the racemes formed the shape of the Lonely Mountain and were surrounded by a plethora of flowers that all meant ‘love’ in a variety of its forms - roses, honeysuckle, white carnations, and forget-me-nots.”

It was an enchanting image that Bilbo painted with his words - Bilbo was ever so clever with words - even if Thorin had no clue what a zinnia looked like and had never before even heard of snapdragons, though he supposed that a flower named after a dragon meaning ‘deception’ was quite fitting.

“It sounds lovely,” Ori said.

“It was,” Bilbo acknowledged. “I’d never been so relieved, in all my life, when Yavanna told me you all yet lived. I also have never been so terrified; there was so much rhododendron, you see, and the last time I saw those blooms in such quantities was when Yavanna warned my people of the Fell Winter the summer before it struck, the season that killed my father. I was afraid I wouldn’t get here in time, no matter how swiftly I traveled.”

“You did though, Ghivashel,” Thorin soothed, pressing a kiss to the top of Bilbo’s curls. “Just in time, I might add, and at precisely the right moment to take the sorcerer unawares.”

“I never should have left in the first place,” Bilbo’s voice was thick with misplaced guilt. “If I had suspected for a moment that it was a trick…”

“You could not have known, Bilbo,” Balin said, kind but firm. “Dáin fooled everyone, kings and wizards and his own soldiers alike. You are not to blame for what he did.”

“You thought we were dead,” Bifur spoke next, “And Dáin had every intention of executing you. Of course, you left. We would have been devastated if you had stayed and ended up under his axe.”

It had caused many a nightmare, on the nights Thorin did not dream, the possibility of Dáin capturing Bilbo too. The Company had been kept alive because they could be used to control the actions of Thorin’s people, once they had migrated from Ered Luin, but Bilbo was only valuable to the Dwarrow among the Company, and to Thorin most of all. Dáin had sworn, often, to kill Bilbo, because Thorin did not deserve to have a One when Dáin’s love had perished at the Battle of Azanulbizar whilst fighting at the side of his father, Náin. If it could have been managed, Dáin would have taken Bilbo’s life as Thorin watched, helpless to prevent it, and that dark prospect had plagued Thorin’s mind for months on end.

“Gandalf would have killed him if he’d managed that,” Bilbo stated, unconcerned by the reminder of Dáin’s designs on his life, which was vexing but not truly surprising, “And my godfather would hardly have cared if doing so had started a whole other war.”

“When one is mad, my love, one does not particularly care about the threat a single Wizard might pose,” Thorin remarked in a grave tone, speaking from experience he wished he had not gained.

“Thorin,” Bilbo sounded grieved again, as they passed back through the archway and into the Hall of Earth. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Do not make light of what I did to you,” Thorin retorted, because he rather suspected that his husband was so relieved that Thorin was not actually dead that Bilbo would gladly pretend the whole mess had never occurred at all if he was allowed to do so.

“You were sick,” Bilbo protested obstinately, proving Thorin’s intuition had not failed him in this regard.

Thorin was prevented from arguing further because Dáin’s voice rang out from the other side of the large steel-plated doors that led out of the chamber and to the rest of the kingdom, “Who is the weasel that dared to carve flowers here, on the floor of one of my halls? I shall string him up by his balls and leave him on the mountainside to be feasted upon by the vermin and insects that call it home!”

“Did the Green Lady do that?” Fíli inquired.

“I’m sure that she provided the meaning, so I would understand,” Bilbo answered, “But only Aulë can carve the stone of Arda - He led me here.”

There was no time to react to that, because the doors had been thrown open and Dáin marched inside, face ruddy with temper even before he caught sight of the Company standing free, the cauldron full of flowers, and the two dead guards. When he did notice, he became so incandescent with rage that his whole body shook with it. Behind him, his guards drew their weapons and held them at the ready.

It was Bilbo whom Dáin inexplicably focused his wrath on, “You! You miserable little rat! I should have torn the Elves’ encampment apart after the Battle and struck you down then. You’ve ruined everything!”

“I think that greatly depends on one’s point of view,” Bilbo snarked, ignoring Thorin’s attempt to usher Bilbo behind him.

“I told Frín to set a curse upon you,” Dáin snarled, “The moment I learned what you had done, Sauronsbane, but he insisted the poisons of Mordor would keep you too weak to interfere with my plans.”

“Sauronsbane,” Bombur echoed faintly.

“Mordor?” Dori cried out a half-beat later.

“Fuck,” Bilbo said, a confirmation of Thorin’s brand new worst fear.

Ice crept through Thorin’s veins and encircled his heart like a vice. He could not breathe and thought he might crumble to dust should he make any attempt to move. The dreams had been real, the visions of Bilbo wasting away as he walked and walked had not been the mere conjurings of a desperate mind. Bilbo had thrown away his little magic ring and Thorin had not realized the magnitude of what his husband was actually doing.

Bilbo - his gentle, kind-hearted, brave little Hobbit - had walked into the heart of Mordor, thrown the One Ring into Mount Doom, and killed the most dangerous being in all of Arda on his own.

“I shall have Frín flogged for his incompetence!” Dáin declared in a thunderous mien. “Where is the wretch?”

“Dead as a doorknob,” Bilbo revealed blithely and, when Dáin sputtered in indignation at the news, continued, “I don’t imagine he’s enjoying his afterlife, seeing as how he tried to unmake Aulë’s favored son. His soul was so tainted with black magic that I would expect he would have been pitched directly into the Timeless Void upon his arrival in the Halls.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Fíli interjected hotly, “You went to fucking Mordor, Idadith?”

“I think we really ought to be focusing on the problem at hand, just now,” Bilbo tried.

“I don’t!” Kíli objected.

“I thought you were dead!” Bilbo exclaimed, as if that explained anything.

Maybe, Thorin thought with rising dread, it did.

“So you decided to pick a fight with the Dark Lord, Nadad?” Nori questioned incredulously, and then more seriously, “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

“No,” Bilbo replied, his eyes darting to Kíli briefly before settling back on Dáin, and then admitting, “It was a bit more complicated than that.”

“You had better uncomplicate it as swiftly as you can, laddie,” Óin instructed.

“Silence!” Dáin roared. “I am king and-”

“You are nothing but a traitor, Dáin, forsaken by the Valar,” Bilbo contradicted, bold as brass and with a spine of Mithril. “Yavanna revealed your treachery to me with the gift of Her Grace and Aulë guided my steps directly from the Secret Door to this hall, marking it with the carved flowers you so disparaged. You are not the King of Carven Stone, nor will you ever be. Thorin is Melhekh Undu ‘Abad.”

“Aye!” the Company, sans Thorin, collectively called out in agreement.

Bilbo’s use of Khuzdûl predictably enraged the guards, who all rushed forward to end the Hobbit’s life. Thorin recovered himself at once, moving to defend his husband from the attackers with savage determination - this, at least, he could do.

In nearly the same moment, the rest of the Company responded to the attack with ineluctable ferocity, enraged as they were by the threat to their Burglar, proving Thorin had been quite correct when he told Bilbo they could take the guards easily as a group. Dwalin, in a single fluid movement, disarmed the first of them, allowing Bifur to cave in the guard’s face with the iron stepladder before Dwalin beheaded the traitor with his own axe. Dori, using the mighty strength of the Sons of Ri, wrapped his arms around the top half of a second guard and crushed the bones in his arms and chest; as his elder brother held the screaming Dwarf still, Nori plunged one of Frín’s ceremonial daggers into the guard’s throat. The third, Bombur rammed into from the side at full speed, knocking him utterly off-balance, so that Glóin could snatch the guard’s mace away and use it to crush the Dwarf’s skull. 

The last of the four guards swung his sword to strike Thorin’s, as Thorin had stepped directly in-between the guard and his husband, the blades meeting with a raucous clang. Weakened though he was by his imprisonment, Thorin was still every inch a master of swordsmanship and the guard was not - Thorin first took the other Dwarf’s hand, slicing it off at the wrist, and then twirled Orcrist in a manner that sent his head rolling across the stone floor.

Fíli, Kíli, Balin, Óin, Ori, and Bofur had formed a ring with their bodies and pulled Bilbo directly into its center, ignoring the Hobbit’s protests that he was perfectly capable of defending himself, thank you very much, and was wielding the only other sword beside Orcrist. Satisfied that Bilbo was in no immediate danger, Thorin turned his attention to his cousin, who had backed out of the hall as his guards fought to the death and was glaring so fiercely at Bilbo that the expression drew a growl, unbidden, from Thorin’s throat.

Dáin looked to him then and sneered, “Your little rat may have thwarted this attempt, but I will take Durin’s place as the Eternal King. Dís is on her way here, to pay her respects at your tombs, and so is little Gimli - their blood is potent enough for my needs.”

Glóin hefted his stolen mace up above his shoulders, “I’ll grind your bones to dust before I let you so much as breathe in my son’s direction.”

“That’s only two,” Balin pointed out, “You need three for the ritual to work and there are not three outside this hall.”

Dáin smiled, and it was not a pleasant thing, “Oh, but there are three, as the Halfling himself can tell you. Because, within the cursed halls of the king tree-shagger, a red-haired Elven whore is heavy with a half-Dwarven child, a babe with Durin’s blood.”

For a moment, Thorin did not understand, and then clarity washed over him in a wave that nearly sent him to his knees - he was not sure he would survive any more surprises.

“What?” Kíli breathed out in shock, “But… I mean, I dreamt… but I never imagined it was real… Bilbo?”

“Tauriel is pregnant,” Bilbo confirmed, drawing Kíli close to him, “And you are the father, Little Raven. The magic of the Line of Durin cannot be masked or mistaken or imitated by any other force, foul or fair, in this world.”

“Uncle,” Kíli pleaded then, scared in the way that any father would be when his child had been threatened, and if it was strange coming from Kíli, it was not wholly unwelcome - after all, fear for a child inevitably meant there was a child to fear for.

Thorin’s nephew, his son in every way that mattered, was going to be a father.

“Stand down, Dáin,” Thorin ordered, striding forward, “Or die here.”

“I shall do neither!” Dáin barked out, raising his warhammer up into the air, “And you shall never escape this place!”

Dáin brought his weapon back down with considerable force, striking what proved to be a strategically fashioned fault in the lower left of the doorway’s frame. Great cracks spread forth from that singular point and stretched out across the ceiling in the span of only a few seconds’ time.

“Get back!” Thorin shouted in warning, as the roof above their heads began to cave in and enormous chunks of granite came crashing down around them.

The entire first row of columns had been purposefully eroded, though Thorin had not been able to sense the weakness in the stone until it was too late due to a number of enchantments that had been painstakingly layered upon them, and they collapsed completely, sending dangerous shards of stone, and silver, and sapphire flying in every direction. Thorin made it to Bilbo and pulled his husband flush against his side as they moved toward the far end of the hall, so he could shield Bilbo with his own body if necessary. He earned himself a sharp poke in the ribs for this protectiveness, when Bilbo caught on to what he was doing.

The torrent of stone did not last long, but when the dust settled it was obvious at a glance that it had done its job. The doorway, and the entire front quarter of the Hall of Earth with it, was completely buried in rock, efficiently blocking the Company in.

“Is anyone injured?” Thorin demanded, running his hands quickly and carefully over Bilbo’s head and arms and back in a frantic search for wounds.

“I’m perfectly fine, Thorin, you made sure of that,” Bilbo assured, “But your forehead is bleeding again.”

Thorin looked around at the others, grateful they were all accounted for, if covered in a thick layer of gray powder.

“Dwalin got clipped in the arm by one of the granite pieces,” Ori said unhappily.

“It’s only a fracture, Agyâdê,” Dwalin told Ori, “Not a break.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Óin harrumphed, stopping over to Dwalin to examine the injury.

“We have no medicines or bandages,” Dori fretted.

“We do, actually,” Bilbo revealed, opening in his little pack again and pulling out jar after jar of healing salves, oils, and tonics, arranging them neatly in a row on a nearby silver bench, and then continuing on to remove a tidy stack of white bandages, a waterskin, and a variety of poultices from the bag as well. “I can’t heal you with Green Magic right now, so we’ll have to make do with these.”

“Are those Elven?” Dwalin asked, looking at the medicines with distaste.

“They are mine,” Bilbo returned waspishly, picking up a bandage and a little pot of azure-hued paste, “And if you ever want me to make you strawberry cream bread again, you will use them as Óin instructs of you.” He looked over to Thorin and his tone gentled as he gestured meaningfully at the bench, “Sit down so I can see to your head, Khaeluh.”

“It’s really just a scratch,” Thorin told him, though he sat so Bilbo could tend to his head, regardless.

“Hush,” Bilbo said as he tipped a bit of water onto the bandage in his hand, “You have to be a good example.”

“I’m sitting, am I not?”

Bilbo smiled at him, using the bandage to carefully clean the blood off Thorin’s forehead, “Yes, you are, I’m very proud of you. Fíli, you get over here, too, and remove your tunic so we can properly wrap your rib.”

Fíli came to them as instructed, dragging his brother along by the arm; Kíli went where Fíli directed him to in a daze, not one caused by any injury but rather by the shock of having his whole world remade. The rest of the Company gathered close, as well, forming a misshapen semi-circle around Thorin and Bilbo. Óin examined the collection of salubrious medicines for a minute, selecting both a squat jar full of a light pink salve and one of the several vials of pale green tonic.

“A pain cordial,” Óin declared, uncorking the vial to release the scent of rosemary mixed with mallorn into the air. He thrust it in Dwalin’s direction with a firm, “Drink it. Fíli, yer to take one too.”

Dwalin and Fíli both did as they were bid, though neither seemed pleased by the taste of the medicine.

“I have a dozen and a half of those,” Bilbo revealed, opening the small pot in his hand, “So anyone who’s hurt should drink one.”

Bofur gestured to the collapse and announced to the room at large, “That there is gonna be a problem.”

“He’s right,” Bifur said, “We don’t have the tools to dig through such a mess.”

“Where does the second set of double doors lead?” Ori asked, “Can we get out that way?”

“Nay,” Balin replied. “It leads only to the Northern Drops. The Hall of Earth was the gateway to the largest of Erebor’s waterfalls. Before Smaug came, this was a sacred place inhabited by the Divines who tended the kingdom’s seven altars to Mahal, Yavanna’s Shrine, and the Rock Creche.”

“The Rock Creche, what’s that?” Bilbo wondered, gingerly spreading the healing paste across the cut on Thorin’s forehead.

It was Thorin who answered the query, because only the King was permitted to reveal such secrets, “Dwarrow reproduce as Men and Elves do, most of the time. Durin has always returned to us by means of carven stone bathed in water infused with silver and sapphire dust and, occasionally, a member of his line with fertility issues would be called upon to Carve a child in the same manner. The Rock Creche is where the stone for such children forms and it overlooks the Northern Drops.”

“Speaking of Dwarrow reproducing,” Fíli said, eyeing his brother meaningfully.

“Tauriel is pregnant, Fee,” Kíli’s voice was reverent. “I didn’t think it was even possible for the two of us to have a child together. Has there ever been a babe born of both Dwarven and Elven heritage?”

Given the general animosity between the two races, Thorin doubted it, “I have never heard of such a child.”

“Neither had Gandalf,” Bilbo supplied, sealing the pot back up, “Or Thranduil, or Lord Elrond, or Lady Galadriel, or any of the other Elves I spoke to. Tauriel is nine months pregnant and due at the beginning of Halimath - Dwarrow and Elves both carry for eleven months.”

Thorin, against his will, did the math - nine months earlier, they had been in Lake-town, residing in the house the Master had provided for them. Tauriel had spent the entire month that the Company waited in Esgaroth for Durin’s Day with Kíli, before leaving to check on Gundabad with Prince Legolas. Thorin only tolerated her presence because she had saved his nephew’s life from a poisoned Orc’s arrow, earning the Elven-king’s ire for doing so, and because he himself had been more than a bit distracted by being newly wedded to Bilbo. He had assumed, at the time, that Fíli would be invested in chaperoning his little brother and Tauriel, as he had ever been protective of Kíli. Thorin had only learned once the cycle of dreams began that Fíli, too, had been preoccupied with matters of the heart in Lake-town, his attention effectively diverted from his brother by the discovery of his One in Sigrid.

“She…” Bilbo hesitated, and then looked directly at Kíli and forged on, “She’s carrying twin girls, your daughters.”

Kíli only stayed upright because Fíli caught him about the waist and kept him so. Thorin empathized with his nephew’s astonishment, for it had been over six hundred years since the last recorded twin birth among their people and over four times that long since a pair of females had been born to Dwarven parents. The last set of twin girls had been princesses, too, and their fate had not been a pleasant one.

“Are you sure we can’t dig out?” Fíli questioned Bifur, his brows furrowed in distress. “If Dáin gets his hands on twin Princesses of Durin’s Line, he could make himself immortal in truth; I imagine the Grace they are sure to inherit from Tauriel will only make it that much easier for him to do so.”

“Dáin cannot touch her,” Bilbo assured them all. “The entire might of the White Council could not get through the protective spells Thranduil has cast over his realm to keep Tauriel and the babes safe from harm. Beyond that, the Elven-king will know by now that you’re alive, so he’ll be preparing for a possible assault if Dáin is foolish enough to launch one. I encountered Roäc before I entered the mountain and asked him to relay to Princess Dís and all those with her exactly what Dáin did to you, and Roäc sent his sons to warn Thranduil and Bard too. Dáin does not have enough soldiers to fight them all, or even the Elves alone.” Bilbo paused and grimaced a bit, “Besides which, my godfather has been chasing after me since I departed Lothlórien, and he’ll have a second army of Elves with him.”

“I’m surprised he did not insist on accompanying you,” Thorin muttered. “He’s quite fond of sticking his nose in the middle of situations such as this.”

“I… left him a note,” Bilbo admitted.

Thorin would have traded away a dozen full chests of gold and gems if he could have borne witness to Tharkûn’s reaction to that.

“There’s another way out,” Thorin declared, standing up from the bench. “Though we shall have to travel to the Northern Drops to reach it. There is an entrance near the Rock Creche to the Nala-dum Durinul, which will lead us straight back to the Royal Wing. It will take close to three days’ time to escape if we go this way, but Dáin has no ability to access any of the secret tunnels, so there is no risk of him hindering us further.”

“Thorin,” Dori spoke in protest, his silver eyes wide, “Only the Royal Family may use the hidden roads.”

“There is no one here whom I do not consider kin to me,” Thorin uttered, looking at each member of his Company in turn, “And I trust all of you with my life. If I am King, then I say that the Nala-dum Durinul are yours to tread.”

“Aye,” the Dwarrow around him agreed, solemn but not unhappy.

Bilbo’s button nose was scrunched up in confusion, but he must have decided that the Dwarven custom which made his kin behave so seriously was benign enough, because he simply told them, “I brought plenty of food and water with me. So, there’s no need to worry about that.”

“Is there anything you didn’t bring?” Nori teased.

“A pickaxe,” Bilbo responded wryly. “And I forgot to pack my handkerchiefs again, too.”

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Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Âfkidhuz'abad [Moon of the Golden Mountain - Tenth Month]
• Ghivashel [Treasure of all Treasures; ‘Beloved’]
• Idadith [Little Uncle]
• Nadad [Brother]
• Nadadith [Little Brother]
• Amadel [Great Mother (Yavanna)]
• Melhekh Undu ‘Abad [King Under the Mountain]
• Agyâdê [My Happiness]
• Khaeluh [My Great Wolf]
• Tharkûn [Gandalf]
• Nala-dum Durinul [Path Halls of the Durin Line]

Chapter Text

Part Four - Caverns Old

The Northern Walk, Erebor - 7 Afterlithe, TA 2942 (Shire Reckoning)

Once Fíli and Dwalin’s injuries had been properly tended to and Bilbo had gotten his Dwarrow to eat - only Kíli was brave enough to try the Lembas bread, which Bilbo slathered in honey and blackberry preserves, but the others ate the dried meats, nuts, and berries readily enough - Thorin had instructed the Company to sleep for a few hours before they set off down what he called the Northern Walk.

Bilbo had not actually slept during this interlude. Instead, he had curled up in Thorin’s lap and clung to his husband, who, for his part, cradled Bilbo in his arms as tightly as he dared. There had not been any conversation, beyond the frequently murmured ‘I love you’s; they simply existed together and relished in the peace that stemmed from being able to do so after their long, forced separation. As the others snored around them, Bilbo had rested his head on one of Thorin’s broad shoulders and kept a hand pressed against the left side of Thorin’s chest so that he might reassure himself that the Dwarf’s heartbeat, beloved and of inestimable importance, remained steady, while Thorin gently traced his fingers over the Hobbit’s face, mapping Bilbo’s features with a worshipful touch. When everyone else had woken, refreshed enough to handle a long day of walking through a dark tunnel, Bilbo found that he did not feel tired at all, despite having stayed awake all night. Rather, he imagined that he had enough energy to march for days, as long as Thorin remained by his side, holding Bilbo’s hand in his own.

Bilbo had produced a lantern that gleamed with a lovely silver light from his pack, since he could not see in the dark like his Dwarrow could, and pressed parcels of food into all of their hands to snack on as they walked - there was no time to arrange for proper First and Second Breakfasts, unfortunately, but Bilbo was determined to see the Company well-fed, regardless.

“So,” Nori said conversationally after about ten minutes of walking along the subterranean road, his tone so innocent that Bilbo was immediately suspicious of it, “Sauronsbane, that’s an interesting title you’ve earned for yourself, Nadad.”

“Do not call me that,” Bilbo groused, uncaring that it was a bit petulant. “I asked the Elves not to do so dozens of times, but even those who conceded and stopped doing so when I was present kept the practice up behind my back.”

“Those bastards,” Bofur sounded sarcastic, a first for him when speaking of the failings of the Quendi, and not nearly as commiserating as Bilbo thought he ought to be.

Bilbo closed his eyes briefly in defeat and resigned himself to what was sure to be a very unpleasant discussion, “The ring I found in the Misty Mountains when we got separated by the Gorgûns, the useful little trinket that turned me invisible, it was the One Ring, the true Ring of Power forged in the fires of Orodruin by Sauron. I realized what it was after the Battle.”

“How?” Ori asked.

“It… it told me what it was,” Bilbo admitted.

The frame of Thorin’s body was tense at Bilbo’s side, a bowstring pulled taut, and when Bilbo glanced over at him, anticipating a fervid reaction such as Thorin was prone to, he was caught off guard to see that his husband’s countenance had instead become one of carved stone, stoic and inscrutable.

“It spoke to you?” Fíli demanded, horrified by the very idea.

“It was a piece of Sauron’s soul, split from the rest,” Bilbo explained, even as he studied Thorin’s face speculatively, “The Dark’s Lord’s tether to this world and, thus, possessed a kind of sapience. I cannot tell you why it woke then, after hibernating for over two thousand years, but it did. It tried to manipulate me, in my grief over losing you, and revealed its true nature in the course of doing so.”

“Manipulate you how?” Thorin’s tone was measured, careful in a way that Bilbo was sure meant that Thorin was suppressing his natural instinct to throw an overprotective fit - before the mess with the Arkenstone, before his will had been drained away by the cursed gold, Thorin would have avidly made his displeasure known at volume and length.

“It claimed that its Master could give you back to me, that your lives would be my reward if I only delivered it to Barad-dûr,” Bilbo answered. “Even if I had not been able to sense the Ring’s malice, which I could from the very moment it woke, I would have known it was lying to me. Sauron may have been powerful, but resurrecting the dead was never among his abilities - the most the Dark Lord ever managed where things of that ilk were concerned was necromancy. It was… utterly galling, that it thought I would dishonor your memory in such a way and I hated the Ring beyond measure even before I decided to destroy it.”

“But ya did decide to destroy it,” Dwalin said.

It was not really a question, but Bilbo still agreed, “Yes, I did. You see, I learned shortly after the Ring first spoke to me what Gandalf had been up to when he left us at the border of Mirkwood. My godfather was called away from us to investigate a Necromancer in Dol Guldur and discovered the Dark Lord’s machinations in the process - everything horrible that happened, Azog hunting us on the road, the fell creatures being driven down from the north to plague us, and the Battle itself, Sauron was directly responsible for it all. Even you losing your home all those years ago was Sauron’s doing, for it was he who stirred Smaug out of his slumber and then tempted the Dragon into attacking Erebor by promising him all the gold in the mountain and ensuring that no one would see him coming until it was much too late to mount a proper defense.”

Thorin had told him once that, had they advance warning of the Dragon’s incursion, Dale could have been evacuated and the Lonely Mountain could have been sealed with an ancient Stone Magic enchantment. No one had ever before been able to explain why the Dragon’s flight south went unnoticed by all, nor why every single one of the Dwarven warning systems, imbued deep within the stone of various locations, had failed to alert the Longbeards of Smaug’s approach when he passed overhead.

“Why would the Enemy be so obsessed with taking Erebor?” Kíli asked in astonishment. “If he promised the gold to Smaug in return for the beast’s loyalty, then it could not be that he desired the riches of the mountain’s mines and quarries.”

“From a tactical standpoint, my lad, Erebor is priceless,” Balin enlightened. “As a stronghold, it is almost impossible to besiege, especially if one does not have a Dragon at hand. If Sauron had taken the mountain, it would have served him well in any subsequent campaign to reconquer the north and reestablish the dark Kingdom of Angmar.”

“That is why Gandalf pressed so hard for you to reclaim your home from Smaug, despite the rest of the White Council opposing the Quest,” Bilbo provided further clarification. “Though he did not then know that Sauron was the architect, he could sense that something Fell was readying itself to strike from the shadows and that Erebor would play a pivotal role.” Bilbo took a deep breath and continued, “My godfather told me all of this, while the Enemy’s cursed Ring rested in the pocket of my coat, told me that Sauron was the one truly responsible for your deaths, and I decided that I would see the wretched thing destroyed if it killed me.”

“It nearly did kill you,” Thorin stated, misery lacing the words as they escaped his lips, and when Bilbo looked back at him, he saw naught but desolation in his husband’s expression. “I saw it, though I did not understand what was happening at the time.”

Bilbo tilted his head in confusion, “Saw it? What do you mean, you saw it?”

“We think it was a side effect of being exposed to so much magic,” Fíli told him, when Thorin could not answer right away, preoccupied as he was with modulating his breathing. “Thorin, Kee, and I would dream of our Ones, every three nights in a cycle, one of us each night, without fail. The first part of the dreams would be a memory of our final encounter with our Ones - I recalled the last conversation I shared with Sigrid, before we left Lake-town to face the Dragon, when she agreed to let me court her if I survived. After the memory played out, the dreams would become less clear and something new each time.”

Bilbo had never heard of the connection between soulmates manifesting in such a profound manner; not even amongst the Elves, who were known for their Sight.

“I saw you walking ceaselessly through the dark,” Thorin divulged. “I could perceive none of your surroundings, nor hear sound, but clearly did I see that you were withering as you traveled ever on toward a destination I could not guess at. I witnessed you tossing away what I believed nothing more than a bauble and then collapse where you stood. You cannot tell me, Ghivashel, that destroying the One Ring did not nearly result in your destruction as well.”

It was true, of course, although Bilbo would have liked to have spared Thorin the knowledge of it, or glossed over the worst of it, at the very least. In other circumstances, sharing this burden with Thorin would have been second nature, but his husband had been imprisoned and tortured and nearly unmade, and Bilbo hated the idea of causing him any more pain.

“The Ring stole my ability to feel hunger, whilst I carried it,” Bilbo confessed, “And I forgot to eat quite frequently, as a result. I was too focused on my mission to care much about my health and…” Bilbo swallowed hard, because he did not wish to hurt any of them with the truth but it would hurt them far more if any other save he revealed it, “I believed, at the time, that I was not going to live much longer anyway.”

Thorin stopped walking at once and twisted around to grip Bilbo by the shoulders, unadulterated terror marring the Dwarf’s features as he demanded in a rough voice, “What are you talking about?”

“Hobbits… we Fade when we lose our Ones, much like the Elves do. But, unlike Elves, my people cannot be sustained by the presence of our One’s child. I…” Bilbo sighed and then continued, hoping the gentleness he infused into the following words would take away some of their sting, “I started to Fade the moment that I confirmed your heart was no longer beating, Khaeluh, and I would have kept Fading, until I died on the first anniversary of your death, had Yavanna not intervened.”

“You… you are not…”

“I am no longer Fading,” Bilbo promised, reaching up to cup Thorin’s face with his palm so that he could stroke his husband’s cheek with his thumb and ease Thorin’s despair. “It stopped once I knew you were alive. It will be some months before the damage is fully healed, and it would be unwise for me to use even my Greentouch for several weeks yet, but the danger of Fading is gone.”

“Bilbo,” Thorin released a shuddering breath and dragged the Hobbit into a tight embrace, “I am never letting you out of my sight again.”

There was absolutely no jest in Thorin’s declaration and an identical absence of mirth in Bilbo’s prompt response to it, “I’m never letting you out of mine, Thorin Oakenshield.”

When Thorin had calmed enough to release him, their nephews were suddenly there, sandwiching Bilbo between them in a tight hug. And then nothing would do but for every one of Bilbo’s darling Dwarrow to pull him close and reassure themselves that he was still very much with them.

“The Elves were keeping you alive,” Óin quite correctly guessed, when it was his turn to hug Bilbo, “That’s why you were in Lórien when Yavanna spoke to you.”

“They healed the physical damage that the Ring and the poisonous air of Mordor did to my body,” Bilbo said, “Particularly, the Lady Galadriel and the Lord Elrond - they spent much of their power to do so, as a point of fact. Dáin’s sorcerer was not wholly wrong, when he told Dáin not to be concerned about me, because if the Elves had not done all they could to heal me, I would have never recovered the strength to stand on my own, let alone anything else.”

“Then the debt that I owe them is incalculable,” Thorin determined gravely, reclaiming Bilbo’s hand with his own.

“Why did you go to Mordor by yourself, Nadadith?” Glóin questioned, as they restarted their trek toward the Northern Drops. “Why not tell Tharkûn what you had discovered? It would have been a safer journey, if only just barely, had you allowed the Grey Wizard to accompany you.”

Bilbo supposed they knew that he had gone south on his own because of Thorin’s strange dreams. Or else, it was simply a very good assumption.

“When my godfather went to Dol Guldur, he was captured by the Dark Lord and several of the Nazgûl,” Bilbo related. “The rest of the White Council went there to save him and, together, they managed to banish Sauron and his servants back to Mordor, but it weakened them all considerably. Gandalf was still drained when he arrived to warn us of the approaching Orc armies and fighting in the Battle cost him greatly. I did not tell him because I wished to spare him further torment at Sauron’s hands. I will tell you; he did not appreciate my leaving the encampment without a word or being left in the dark for all the months he chased after me.”

Bilbo rather doubted that Gandalf would be much more appreciative of his second disappearing act, but at least, this time, he had left a note to explain himself.

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The Northern Drops were a sight truly spectacular to behold. 

Aside from the one at Ravenhill, the only other proper waterfalls Bilbo had ever seen were in Rivendell and even the largest of those had been less than a quarter in size when compared to the Drops, so he found himself quite in awe of the three magnificent cascades when the Company finally reached them the following day. After passing under a massive stone archway, the road had ended at an angular ledge that overlooked the Drops and provided an excellent view of the whole area. The jut of stone was bordered with a thick, but still ornate, silver railing that came up to Bilbo’s chest and when Bilbo pressed against it he saw that the water plunged so deep into the earth that he could not make out the Drop's end.

After a long few minutes of staring at the trio of roaring waterfalls in wonder, Bilbo looked away and realized that the enormous cavern which housed the fearsome Drops was illuminated by hundreds upon hundreds of blue-green light sources. Hanging from the ceiling was a myriad of what seemed to be thin glowing icicles that grew amongst the cave's giant stalactites in a dazzling fashion.

“Glow-worms,” Balin told him, when he noticed Bilbo marveling up at the arresting lambency high above their heads, “All of the major waterfalls in the mountain, save the Eastern Drops, are lit via their bioluminescence, for they thrive in cool, wet places such as this cavern.”

“They’re beautiful,” Bilbo remarked.

Balin smiled warmly at him, “Aye, and they’re quite magically robust, as well. Their presence prevents the water in the mountain from being tainted by toxins and curses alike, ensuring it is safe for us to drink and cook and clean with.”

“Why do they not protect the Eastern Drops?” Bilbo asked, spinning in a slow circle.

“The cavern in which those falls can be found is much too warm for the little creatures,” Balin answered.

“The Eastern Drops are a part of Erebor’s massive hot springs system,” Dori explained. “The basins of those mineral-rich pools are lined instead with naturally occurring fyre-crystals, which keep the water and caves lit and burn when touched, as true fire does.”

“One of the pools in the hot springs would serve as the perfect locale to teach a person to swim,” Bofur said pointedly.

“Hobbits cannot swim, Bo,” Bilbo returned.

“That’s why we need to teach you,” Kíli insisted.

“When I say that ‘Hobbits cannot swim’, I do not mean that we simply do not care to. I mean that we, as a people, are entirely incapable of doing so. It is the price we pay for the Green Magic that flourishes in our cores - that is why drowning is the most common cause of death in the Shire besides old age,” Bilbo told them. “I understand the mechanics of swimming well enough, but no amount of kicking will keep my head above the surface of deep water.”

“So, all an assassin would need to do to take you from us is shove you into a bathtub,” Nori determined flatly.

Bilbo rolled his eyes at that, “Oh, honestly, Nori. No one is going to try to assassinate me.”

Nori did not look particularly appeased by Bilbo’s conviction.

“The entrance to the Nala-dum Durinul is over there,” Thorin nodded toward a place to the left of the tunnel’s end, opposite a set of doors stamped with the Crest of Durin that Bilbo guessed led into the Rock Creche.

The section of wall to which Thorin gestured seemed to be void of salience, as it lacked adornments of any kind, but Bilbo knew better than to judge how pertinent anything Dwarven in design might be based on appearance. All of the Company adored fantastic embellishments and showing off, to be sure, but, conversely, were equally concerned with hiding the things they treasured from outsiders - the Secret Door, with its elaborately carved staircase and near-constant invisibility, was an excellent example of this particular facet of the sometimes-contrary nature of Dwarrow.

Before Thorin could move toward the deceptively plain wall, Bilbo felt a rush of intemerate magic coming from the stone beneath his feet and he gasped at the sensation. The Company must have felt it too, their Stonesense serving to alert them to the minute shifting of the mountain’s rock, because they all froze in place seconds prior to the message from Aulë surfacing.

Bilbo crouched down to brush his fingers against one of the sleek green leaves embedded in the ground and was rewarded with a small surge of affection passing from the bright metal into his core - the Stone King’s favor was not the sunshine-warm, deep-rooted maternal regard of the Green Lady, rather, it was vociferous and immutable, full of an untamed sort of pride that burned like the fire of a forge. Thin stemmed, bushy coriander branched out across the ground, its compound leaves encircling the shimmering impression of an acorn firmly attached to an oak leaf.

“Mithril!” Bifur recovered first. “Mahalul gabil khubûb, this is Mithril!”

“Green Mithril,” Nori breathed in shock. 

“Coaxing colored Mithril from stone was the specialty of Durin I,” Thorin told Bilbo. “Though the Eternal King was always able to call forth the precious ore in small quantities with his Stonetouch, only during his first life could he produce the colored varieties, and all of it was lost when Khazad-dûm was taken by the Balrog.”

“Aulë used this same metal to lead me to you,” Bilbo revealed, “Fashioned to look like great vines of ivy.”

“What kind of leaves are these?” Thorin questioned. “I recognize the oak leaf and the acorn, but the others are different.”

“The plant is called coriander, it’s an herb,” Bilbo replied, beckoning his husband over with a wave of his hand. “Something is hidden here, Thorin, something Aulë wishes for us to find - that is His message.”

Thorin cautiously moved to kneel beside Bilbo, trying his best to avoid stepping on any of the Mithril leaves, “Apart from the entrance to the secret tunnels, I know of nothing else that was concealed in this place.”

“I cannot tell you what has been stashed here, or what method was used to shroud its presence,” Bilbo said, placing his hand on the green acorn. “I can sense Aulë’s Magic and Yavanna’s Grace.”

“As can I,” Thorin admitted, “It’s beautiful.”

Then Thorin placed his palm directly on top of the oak leaf, the tips of his fingers overlapping Bilbo’s, and a blinding beam of sapphire light shot up out of the stone, engulfing them all.

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Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Ghivashel [Treasure of all Treasures; ‘Beloved’]
• Idadith [Little Uncle]
• Nadad [Brother]
• Nadadith [Little Brother]
• Khaeluh [My Great Wolf]
• Tharkûn [Gandalf]
• Nala-dum Durinul [Path Halls of the Durin Line]
• Mahalul gabil khubûb [Mahal’s Great Forges]

Flower Meanings - https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

• Coriander [Hidden Worth/Merit]
• Acorn [Promise of New Beginnings, Potential, Patience; Stands for Bilbo]
• Oak [Strength; Stands for Thorin]

Chapter Text

Part Five - A Blessing of Stone

The Northern Drops, Erebor - 8 Afterlithe, TA 2942 (Shire Reckoning)

The first thing Bilbo noticed, after the blue glare faded away and he managed to blink his vision back to normal, was that the sound of cascading water had dissipated into silence.

“By my beard!” Dwalin exclaimed.

Bilbo looked away from Thorin, who was staring at him wide eyed, toward the waterfalls and surged to his feet in shock and alarm when he realized that all three had frozen. Not in the way that the Celduin’s waterfall at Ravenhill had iced over during the winter, for the temperature in the cavern had not changed in the slightest and there was no trace of frost or snow, but as if time itself had come to a halt. The roaring of the Northern Drops had ceased because the water had simply stopped falling.

An impossible walkway of clear crystal stretched out across the considerable gulf that lay between the ledge and the middle waterfall, bridging the two sites quite effectively. A part of the ledge’s railing had shifted to form an access point for the new path, twisting into axe-shaped pillars that stood on either side of the entrance, sentries of shimmering silver.

“Thorin,” Balin spoke with a tremulous voice as he examined the pair of axes with a strange intensity.

“I see it, Balin,” Thorin replied, standing.

“See what?” Bilbo asked.

“The axes, laddie,” Óin commented, tone solemn, “They were designed to mimic the two most important axes in Dwarven history.”

“Manzarthi, the Baruk Bavonaz Dohyaraz Ra Gimlaz - the Axe of the Crown, Anvil, and Stars - more commonly referred to as the Royal Axe,” Fíli gestured to the weapon-like stanchion on the right. “The weapon was passed down from one king of Durin’s Folk to the next for millennia until it was lost with Moria.”

“And the other?” Bilbo wondered.

“It is called Annikthi,” Thorin told him. “Which means ‘cause to return’ in Khuzdûl. It is Durin’s axe, wielded by him and him alone throughout the Ages. Made of blue and silver Mithril, it was extremely magical and could not be kept from Durin’s hand by anything or anyone.”

“And it was lost too?”

“It vanished when Durin VI perished,” Balin relayed. “Annikthi stays with Mahal’s firstborn in life and death.”

“Thráin I designed the Hall of Earth, the Northern Walk, and the Rock Creche when he refounded Erebor. If something is hidden behind the waterfall, then it’s highly likely that he put it there himself. And he came directly from Moria, as he was Durin VI’s grandson, so it can be no minor heirloom,” Dori pointed out.

“No,” Thorin agreed, “If Thráin I placed an artifact here in secret, then it can only be something of true consequence to our people.”

“Something Mahal wishes for you to find, Uncle,” Kíli observed.

Thorin strode forward, marching out onto the walkway without hesitation, “Then, whatever it is, it will be found.”

“I would love to know what your ancestors had against railings,” Bilbo remarked, nervously stepping onto the crystal so that he might follow Thorin. The path was utterly transparent, making one feel as if they were walking on air if they glanced down to their feet, and Bilbo did not enjoy the dizzying experience at all. “I thought navigating through the Throne Room was bad enough, but this is… just, why?”

Thorin wrapped one strong arm about his waist, “I will not allow you to fall.”

“I know,” Bilbo conceded, because that Thorin would keep him safe was never in question, and allowed the Dwarf to guide him across the bridge, firmly fixing his gaze on his husband’s lovely profile to prevent himself from looking down into the abyss below.

“The Throne Room, as you saw it, was designed by my grandfather and meant to be imposing,” Thorin related, “To throw visiting dignitaries off-balance. It was not the most honorable of tactics, for all that the results were striking. All of the other main thoroughfares in the kingdom had railings to ensure the safety of those who tread upon them, though many were fashioned from gold and were, subsequently, ripped out of place by the Dragon to augment the blasted worm’s hoard.”

“Fair warning,” Bilbo said, “Getting those railings back into place is going to be fairly high on my priority list.”

Thorin huffed out a laugh, “I will see it done, Ghivashel.”

They reached the central waterfall, frozen in time, and Bilbo made note of the individual droplets of water suspended in the air, supported by nothing at all, “Is this Stone Magic?”

“Aye,” Thorin confirmed, “Thráin I was the last known Dwarf capable of Stonespeech - using Khuzdûl to cast enchantments. My Stonesense is strong enough that I can interact with the spells, but I cannot cast such myself. Indeed, no Dwarf alive can; this is why Frín resorted to the black arts and why my cousin kept the sorcerer close at hand. This is not a true cessation of time, of course, but a pause for the Drops alone.”

Thorin touched the stilled cascade, then, and it parted, like a set of drapes being drawn open, to reveal a door made entirely of sapphire, which Bilbo had not realized was even possible. There was a relief painstakingly carved into the blue gemstone surface, a highly detailed depiction of an anvil, that caused Thorin to inhale sharply. There was no doorknob or handle, but there did not need to be, as the door opened before Thorin could even touch it, rising into the rock in a swift and steady glide.

The chamber hidden behind the door was black as pitch, but when Bilbo offered his husband the lantern, Thorin shook his head, “This is a magical darkness - the lamp will be of no use.”

“Ever on, then?” Bilbo murmured, stowing the Elven light back in his rucksack.

“Ever on,” his husband agreed, and together, with the Company flanking them, they stepped into the chamber.

The dark melted away the moment they had fully moved through the doorway. Pinpricks of light, thousands of them embedded seamlessly into the floor, made it appear as if they were walking on a field of stars, with more of the same emanating from the walls and roof of the chamber. An abundance of tiny crystals expertly set into the rock shone with a gentle brilliancy that illuminated the space in a manner that seemed almost magical to Bilbo’s perception.

In the very center of the seven-sided room sat a large anvil of Mithril, one which was an exact match to the carving on the door and that gleamed under the luster of the crystals.

“It cannot be,” Thorin gasped.

“What can’t it be?” Bilbo asked a few beats later, examining the anvil with a critical eye, certain that he was lacking some rather crucial information that would grant him the clarity he needed to understand why his Dwarrow were standing like boulders around the room with thunderstruck expressions on each of their faces.

“It’s Durin’s Anvil,” Bofur breathed out, “One of the divine tools forged by Mahal in Valinor. Our Maker gifted it to Durin as an acknowledgement that His firstborn had mastered each one of the seven High Crafts of Smithing - gold, silver, Mithril, copper, platinum, iron, and jewel - and all of the secondary forms under His tutelage.”

“In ages past, Nadad, every king who ascended to the throne was tested by this anvil, Tarbathôn,” Ori added, the pronouncement thick with a veneration that was directed at the object before them, “And wore the unique crown it bestowed upon them for the duration of their reign. The practice ended, as so many others did, when Moria was taken, and the Raven Crown, crafted by Thráin I, became an heirloom worn by every subsequent monarch.”

“What reason could Thráin I possibly have had to hide his grandfather’s anvil here?” Kíli questioned aghast.

“Why would Thráin I design an enchantment that could only be broken by Thorin and Bilbo?” Nori interjected. “It’s oddly specific.”

“He is known for having Stonesight, and his visions seldom did not come to pass,” Bifur said.

“Thorin,” Dwalin spoke then, his voice low and urgent, “You must touch it.”

Thorin seemed pained by the determination, rather than enthused, guilt flashing in his eyes, plain as day, in the seconds before he closed them in an effort to steel himself - Bilbo was no cotton-headed fool, so he realized why almost immediately. Though he understood the reaction, it still made Bilbo’s soul ache to see how much Thorin doubted his own worth, how his husband could not bring himself to believe that he was deserving of forgiveness for what had happened while Thorin was beleaguered by the thrall of the gold.

“Khaeluh, it will be alright,” Bilbo soothed.

“I do not deserve this,” Thorin returned. “Not finding Tarbathôn, not the throne, and certainly not you, Bilbo. Not after I let the weakness of my line overcome my sense and nearly murdered you over a rock.”

“I betrayed you,” Bilbo said baldly.

“You did not,” Thorin protested, his eyes snapping back open.

“I did,” Bilbo countered. “I knew that taking the Arkenstone would hurt you, not just because it was something you considered vital, but also that I was the one who stole it away, when I was the one whom you kept trusting despite the gold-sickness, and I did it anyway, Thorin. I quite deliberately caused you pain.”

“To save me, to save us all,” Thorin rejoined, “And I…”

Bilbo kept his tone matter of fact as he spoke, “Did what no other has ever managed to do. You fought the pull of the gold and beat the sickness that has plagued your line for generations.”

“I tried to kill you,” the statement escaped Thorin’s lips permeative with regret. “A Dwarf’s Umùrad’akar is a sacred gift from Mahal… and I tried to kill you.”

“And I forgave you for it, even as it was happening,” Bilbo insisted.

“You should not have!” Thorin exclaimed, severely displeased.

“Do you wish to harm me, still?” Bilbo challenged, raising an eyebrow at his husband.

“No!” Thorin’s grip on Bilbo’s upper arms was careful, the Dwarf as conscientious as ever of how great his strength was when compared to a Hobbit’s, a counterpoint to the urgent fierceness of his words. “No, I would send myself to the stone before I raised a hand to do you harm.”

“See?” Bilbo tucked a stray lock of Thorin’s ebony hair behind his husband’s ear. “You were ill, my darling, you were not yourself. But you came back when it should have been impossible. Do you truly not understand the enormity of that? Can you not see how amazing it is that you possessed the levels of strength and tenacity required to fight off a blood curse?”

“Bilbo is right,” Dwalin proclaimed, as earnest as the Hobbit had ever heard him be, “There is nothing unworthy about you.”

“You are our king, and Durin’s Anvil is not going to refute that,” Balin spoke.

“Of course not,” Dori agreed. “Tarbathôn will give you the crown of your reign; the restoration of an ancient and honored tradition shall begin with you, once you set your hands upon its face.”

Thorin did not actually seem convinced, more resigned really, but since no one else shared his pessimism or spoke out to deny his right to rule, he gave them all a sharp nod and consented, “Very well.”

Bilbo silently dared the anvil to not recognize Thorin’s hard-won kingship. If it did not give his husband the crown that his Dwarrow believed should appear after everything that Thorin had endured in the decades since losing Erebor, then Bilbo would be having words with Aulë and they would be quite unpleasant.

His steps were slow, but Thorin’s pace did not falter, and he gently tugged Bilbo along with him so that they approached Tarbathôn together. Up close, Bilbo noted that there were geometric designs etched onto every square inch of the anvil’s Mithril surface, a pattern so elaborate and stunning that he could hardly believe the tool was truly meant for use in a forge. Thorin only paused for half a moment before lifting his hands to the shimmering metal, letting them rest upon the top of the anvil.

Tarbathôn began to glow under Thorin’s palms, the bright orange-red that Bilbo associated with metal heated in a smithy’s fire. Before Bilbo could get worked up over that, his brief sense of alarm was washed away by an expression of stunned delight stealing across Thorin’s face.

“Mahal,” Thorin said, deferential and a bit overcome.

“My son,” a voice as ancient as the mountains of Arda and as sharp as a blade forged in Dwarven fire echoed through the chamber. Every Dwarf in the room, except for Thorin whose hands were fixed in place to the top of the anvil, took a knee in respect. “My children, you have done well.”

The Company preened a bit at the praise, though it had the opposite effect on Thorin, who seemed to wilt, “I am so sorry, Mahal. I failed you and-”

“Thorin,” Aulë apparently disapproved of Thorin’s guilt as much as Bilbo did, which was rather gratifying, “You suffered under the effects of a curse so powerful that it was able to hinder communication between me and my children in Arda.”

“What?” Thorin demanded, shocked out of a worshipful tone by Aulë’s stunning announcement.

“Sauron feared my power so much that he actively sought to destroy my influence in this world. My deviation from the original Song offended him greatly, and he intended to systematically rid Middle Earth of my sons and daughters to rectify what he saw as a perversion. One of his schemes involved blocking me off from my living Dwarrow - a dark enchantment in three parts,” Aulë explained, and then his tone became regretful, “You were always going to fall to the gold sickness curse, Thorin, my son. For it was black magic that no Dwarf could resist.” Aulë’s next words were filled to the brim with pride, “But, when you reclaimed your mind, you broke that curse forevermore along with the first binding on the spell keeping me from you. You are of Durin’s line, so I could give you Dreams of your One whilst you were parted from him, though the black arts that Frín practiced muddled them and made them less clear than they ought to have been.”

“The other parts?” Thorin questioned. “What must be done to end the enchantment completely?”

“Your Burglar snapped the second binding when he destroyed the One Ring,” Aulë answered. “The Rings of Power were not always an evil in this world, for they were crafted to do great good, but the Deceiver corrupted them utterly when he forged his Master Ring. Once the One had been made, it was folly to possess or use any of the others, and yet none of the Ringbearers could bring themselves to part with theirs.”

“The seven Rings given to the Dwarf-lords,” Bilbo spoke, “Their purpose was changed to stymy your power?”

“Among other foul things, yes. It was a slow corruption, designed to go unnoticed, and one which grew steadily stronger with every year that passed. I did not even realize what was happening for centuries, that is how insidious and slow the creep of darkness was, and by the time I did, it was too late for me to intervene,” Aulë confirmed ruefully. “But, that darkness died with the Enemy, and, thus, I can speak through Tarbathôn, for it was crafted of my own hand. I owe you a debt immeasurable for that, Bilbo Baggins, child of Yavanna.”

“No, no, no,” Bilbo protested without delay, appalled by the very notion of a Vala owing him anything. “I’m happy to have been of service, but there is no debt. Besides, you led me to the Company with the Mithril and the carvings, Milord; it would have taken me days, if not weeks, to locate them on my own, and by then it would have been too late.”

“Guiding you and allowing you to open the Secret Door served me just as much as it did you, Little Flower,” Aulë pointed out. “There would have been no end to my pain had four of my sons been unmade.”

“Do you mean to say that the Secret Door really can only be opened once a year?” Bilbo asked, biting back a scathing report that would have detailed precisely how ridiculous he found the design of that to be.

Aulë chuckled at him, the laughter of the Stone King reverberating around the chamber and causing the lights to coruscate, “Indeed. It was originally constructed to serve as part of an annual ceremony that symbolized how the Kingdom of Erebor would always be waiting to welcome the Khathiz Melhekh home, but Thrór stopped the practice when he ascended to the throne.”

Bilbo supposed that a symbolic entrance for the Eternal King opening on a single night out of the three hundred and sixty-five in a calendar year was, actually, a lovely concept. He then subsequently decided that Thrór’s hiding the true purpose of the Secret Door from even his own heirs was positively asinine; possibly, the blood curse had been affecting him for much longer than anyone realized.

“Oh, that’s what you meant,” Fíli realized. “I forgot that Uncle gave you the key and map to look after once we had entered the mountain - you still have them. What did you do, Idadith, poke around with the key until you happened upon the lock?’

“That is exactly what he did,” Aulë still sounded amused.

“Well,” Bilbo shrugged, “I couldn’t use the main gates because my core was too drained to help hide me from sight and, technically, it worked.”

“The third binding,” Thorin pressed, sobering them quickly. “Can you tell us what it is, Mahal, that it might be severed?”

“Do you truly not know, Thorin?” Aulë responded, voice solemn but not unkind.

“The Arkenstone.” Thorin had clenched his jaw, Bilbo noticed after he twisted his head sharply to stare at the Dwarf in surprise. “It is the Arkenstone. After I recovered my mind, I hated it beyond measure - that abhorrence has not waned in the least in the months since.”

“It is not truly a gem, as it is not of my design. The stone is a kind of seed, one of ruin and decay that was planted in the mountain by Sauron long before the Balrog woke to steal the Dwarrowdelf away,” Aulë confirmed gravely. “It sat patiently for a full Age, augmenting its already considerable power, as it could absorb the ambient magic that the Lonely Mountain naturally produces, and growing all the more alluring. Once the Longbeard Clan returned to Erebor, where the first of my children were Carved, the third binding activated properly. Stonetouch, Stonesight, and Stonespeech began to dwindle amongst all of the Clans, until all three of these gifts were lost when Thráin I passed on to the Halls. Birth rates dropped dramatically, reducing the number of my children in Arda tenfold in just nine centuries, even as Orcs spawned more of their foul kind in unprecedented quantities. Avarice grew unchecked in the hearts of the other Dwarf-lords and they cast aside my will. All of this, my son, is because of the Arkenstone.”

“I’ll destroy it,” Thorin vowed. “Whatever it takes.”

“It’s here, in the mountain,” Bilbo murmured, trying to comprehend the damage a single rock had caused to an entire race, “Bard gave it to Dáin to buy peace after the Battle.”

“You will need this,” Aulë said, and then a bolt of azure lightning struck the face of the anvil, right between Thorin’s hands. “No normal weapon can damage that fell gem.”

Thorin lifted an axe up and away from the forging tool, his eyes blown wide. Bilbo recognized the weapon since it matched the statue that Fíli had explained was a depiction of the Royal Axe. Manzarthi was beautiful, without a doubt, being a solid piece fashioned out of Shadow Mithril. It was adorned with blue diamonds that were carved into the shape of fourteen stars; their number divided in half and positioned on both sides of the wickedly sharp blade, they were embedded into the metal over top of each embossed anvil and crown set.

It had been nearly a thousand years since it had been lost, but the Baruk Bavonaz Dohyaraz Ra Gimlaz was once more secure in the hands of the King of Durin’s Folk.

“Destroy the Arkenstone and rid the world of the last dregs of Sauron’s malice,” Aulë dictated. “King Under the Mountain.”

Electricity, bright blue and dazzling, sparked all around the Company. Though it was powerful, it did not sting as the flash of a storm would have; rather, the whole experience was invigorating. A weight, not unpleasant, settled atop Bilbo’s head, but he was distracted before he could investigate by the sight of his husband.

There was a crown on Thorin’s brow of polished obsidian and Mithril, the two materials crafted into the frame of a pattern Bilbo recognized from the vambraces Thorin had worn during the Quest, and set with more blue diamonds in various sizes all the way around; Bilbo was not disappointed to see the Raven Crown rendered obsolete, for it had been imbued with a harsh aura that he had not enjoyed. All of Thorin’s missing beads were in his hair, braided into the thick ebony strands just as they ought to have always been, and Bilbo could not stop himself from reaching up and touching the green-gold, rose-shaped bead made of his magic which tied off the end of his husband’s Courting Braid, drawing Thorin’s attention to it and the others. Thorin’s clothing had been transformed from rags into fine silver and jet silks, rich blue velvet, and polished raven-hued leather. He no longer seemed diminished and on the verge of starvation, but as full of vigor as he had been on the day that he knocked on Bag End’s door, over a year earlier, and even the healing cut on his forehead was gone.

It was a welcome sight, one Bilbo had believed would take him many months to see; a quick glance around confirmed that the rest of the Company had been equally bolstered by the charge of divine energy, with weapons of their own.

“Take back Erebor,” was Aulë’s parting order to them.

Tarbathôn stopped glowing and promptly shrank in size, until it was small enough that it could be carried in a person’s pocket. Thorin picked it up off the ground and tucked it into a silk pouch on the inside of his jerkin, directly over his heart. Bilbo imagined that his husband had no intentions of permitting Durin’s Anvil to be hidden away ever again - they would have to find a suitable place for it, if there did not already exist some traditional site.

“Mahal crowned you with flowers of Green Mithril and a rainbow of diamonds, Lasleluh,” Thorin revealed, caressing the right side of Bilbo’s face. “I recognize some of the flowers, though I have never seen blue roses before this day. The greenery I know to be ivy and oak leaves, which are attached to acorns. I cannot say what the purple, red, white, black, orange, and pink blooms are.”

Bilbo blinked at his husband and, as he processed the idea of a flower crown with even a single rare blue rose, he reached up to lift the diadem off of his head so that he could examine Aulë’s gift, “Oh!”

There were blue roses, the petals fashioned from cobalt-colored diamonds, sprouting out of the Green Mithril ivy with a number of other bejeweled blossoms; no single flower or leaf was exceptionally large, but all were exquisitely crafted and together they formed a wreath that quite took Bilbo’s breath away. It hardly weighed anything in Bilbo’s hands, though the Hobbit knew that the circlet was worth a veritable fortune, even if one discounted that it had been personally bestowed upon him by Aulë. Including the ivy and the roses, there were eleven different representations of green life, seven of each one - for eleven was as special a number for Yavanna’s children as seven was for Dwarrow - creating the most spectacular garland of flowers that Bilbo had ever seen.

“Idadith?” Kíli worried, when Bilbo had been quiet for too long.

“As far as messages go,” Bilbo remarked faintly, “It is certainly not a subtle one.”

“What do you mean?” Fíli asked. “Is it bad?”

“No, of course not.” Bilbo’s fingers drifted across the gemstone petals of one of the roses, “Blue roses mean ‘fascination’ and ‘wonder’. In the Shire, they are quite the singular sight, for they are even more difficult to grow than roses of any other color, which themselves take considerable skill to coax from the earth. They’re an extremely magical plant, and a decoction brewed from just one of their petals can heal any physical illness, whether it be conventional or preternatural in origin. My father… Papa was the only individual I knew of who could grow them; I, myself, never learned the secret to doing so. The gift of one is the highest honor amongst my people because we value them so.”

“What do the sunflowers symbolize?” Bofur asked.

“These are a miniature breed of sunflowers. You can tell because their centers are black instead of the brown the giant sunflowers sport. They mean ‘adoration’, but when they grow during Lithe, they are a nudge from Yavanna to seek the light and stand tall in the face of adversity. During harvest time in late autumn, thousands can be found in Hobbiton alone, used practically everywhere as decoration, because they are a reminder as winter approaches of how precious sunshine is to my people.”

“Seek the light and spurn the dark. That is sage advice, laddie,” Óin determined. “What of the ivy, oak, and acorns?”

Bilbo looked from the cheerful yellow gems of the sunflowers to the seven finger-thick strands of Green Mithril braided together with a single ivy leaf branching off each one of them, the leaves positioned equidistant on the circlet, “The ivy means ‘fidelity’, for the vines hold fast to that which they love.”

“You told me at Beorn’s that oak is a symbol of strength,” Thorin reached out to touch one of the little acorns with his index finger.

“It is,” Bilbo trailed his fingers over the oak leaf that the acorn was married to, marveling at how lovely the carved green diamond looked, seamlessly attached to a gemstone the color of melted chocolate. “And as oak means ‘strength’, an acorn means ‘the promise of new beginnings’; though here, bound together as they are, the leaf and seed are emblematic of how you and I pledged ourselves to one another, Thorin.”

“How lovely,” Dori declared.

Ori sighed happily, “That’s terribly romantic.”

“These purple star-shaped blooms are called clematis, another kind of vine that likes to sprawl,” Bilbo said, voice turned wry. “They are often woven into garlands for the winners of riddling competitions at garden parties and festivals, as they mean ‘cleverness’. The black hellebore is a symbol of ‘hope’ and a promise that one can overcome past troubles. The pink flowers edged with white are sweet william and the silvery-white blossoms with the yellow centers are a mountain flower called edelweiss; they mean ‘gallantry’ and ‘courage’, respectively.”

“And the red and orange flowers?” Glóin wondered.

“The red is celosia,” Bilbo replied. “They mean ‘boldness’, because of their flame-like coloring. The last is lantana, which always grows in multi-colored clusters, but the tri-orange variety speaks of ‘radiance’.”

“Not subtle,” Thorin agreed, amused in a way Bilbo did not appreciate, gently plucking the diadem out of the Hobbit’s hands to crown Bilbo with it once more, “And, yet, I believe the message to be perfectly accurate, my Consort.”

Bilbo did not say that, had the crown been anything less than a gift from a Vala, he would not have been able to bring himself to wear it, for he rather lacked the pomposity necessary to believe he was deserving of such weighty accolades, but he did think it very hard.

“And your crown, love?” Bilbo questioned. “It has the exact same pattern your arm-guards did when we were traveling.”

“Emùlhekh,” Balin supplied. “It is a very special pattern that may only be utilized by the King of Carven Stone - it was designed by Durin I during the early years of his reign.”

“It translates to ‘majesty’ in Westron,” Thorin said.

Bilbo smiled at him, “It suits you.”

“Thank you, Ghivashel.” Thorin took his hand and kissed it. “Come, the Nala-dum Durinul await us, and we have a distance to travel yet.”

They left the starlit chamber and crossed back over the crystal bridge. As soon as every member of the Company was standing back on the ledge, the crystal shattered into millions of infinitesimal shards, which fell without pause into the abyss below, and the three great waterfalls resumed their plunges into the deep dark. The silver melted away from the axes to reform the railing, leaving behind a pair of polished white granite statues - battleaxes, still, but more generic in form.

Thorin led the Company to the blank expanse of rock he had already indicated was the entrance and spoke a word of command, “Jund.”

A significant chunk of stone swung inward without delay, revealing a passage lined every few feet with a Habanûrzudaz that was cut into the shape of a heptagon and set into the roof to light their way. The floor of the tunnel was the beautiful green granite that Erebor had in abundance crisscrossed with a inch-thick golden grout that traveled halfway up the polished white marble walls, as well. The ceiling was low enough that Bilbo could have touched it if he stood on his toes, barely clearing Dwalin’s height, but it was at least four Dwarrow wide.

Bilbo and Thorin shared a look, a silent verification that they were both ready to accomplish that which Aulë had tasked them to do, and then they moved into the passage together.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Manzarthi [Cause to Govern]
• Baruk Bavonaz Dohyaraz Ra Gimlaz [Axe of the Crown, Anvil, and Stars]
• Annikthi [Cause to Return]
• Nadad [Brother]
• Tarbathôn [Cause to Craft]
• Khaeluh [My Great Wolf]
• Ghivashel [Treasure of all Treasures; ‘Beloved’]
• Umùrad’akar [Soulmate; A Dwarrow’s One]
• Khathiz Melhekh [Eternal King]
• Lasleluh [My Rose of all Roses]
• Emùlhekh [Majesty]
• Idadith [Little Uncle]
• Nala-dum Durinul [Path Halls of the Durin Line]
• Jund [Open]
• Habanûrzudaz [Gem of the Sun]

Flower Meanings - https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

• Ivy [Fidelity]
• Acorn [Promise of New Beginnings, Potential, Patience; Stands for Bilbo]
• Oak [Strength; Stands for Thorin]
• Red Celosia [Boldness]
• Orange Lantana [Radiance]
• Sunflower, Miniature (Dwarf) [Adoration]
• Blue Rose [Fascination, Wonder]
• Purple Clematis [Mental Beauty, Cleverness]
• Black Hellebore [Hope, Rising From Past Troubles]
• Edelweiss [Courage, Devotion]
• Pink Sweet William [Gallantry]

Chapter Text

Part Six - Heart of the Mountain

The Gallery of the Kings, Erebor - 5 Âfkidhuz'abad, TA 2942 (Dwarven Reckoning)

With Bilbo’s hand in his and their nephews on either side of them, Thorin had led the Company through the maze that the Nala-dum Durinul were and to an exit that was located just outside the Gallery of the Kings. Once, a grand tapestry depicting the original refounding of Erebor had hung in front of the hidden entrance to the tunnels, but it had been turned to ash, along with most of the other needlecraft compositions that had been on display, when Smaug invaded. This meant that there could be no concealing the door opening when Thorin gripped the special notch carved into the stone beside the exit and pulled at the release mechanism.

Fortunately, there was no one around to bear witness to thirteen Dwarrow and a Hobbit exiting the sacred paths. Not that Thorin was particularly concerned about their being seen, because, even if they had been, only individuals whose blood had been added to Erebor’s ward stone by the King of Carven Stone could interact with the magic and open the passage. Once the mountain had been secured, Thorin would have to obtain drops of blood from Bilbo, Fíli, Kíli, and the others to add to the ward stone so that they could use the tunnels and interact with the Bloodrunes that controlled the defenses and lighting in the Royal Mansion. 

Unfortunately, he swiftly came to understand that the reason there were no observers to make note of their emergence was because something of a battle had begun within the Gallery proper, if the terrible racket composed of clanging weapons and ferocious shouts coming from the direction of the hall was anything for Thorin to go by.

“The Arkenstone is in there, I can feel it,” Bilbo revealed through gritted teeth. “Thorin, it’s… it’s so dark. I cannot believe that my perception of it before now was so altered - when I first found it, it just seemed like another gem, albeit a unique one.”

Perhaps that was for the best, because Thorin did not wish to imagine what he might have done to his husband in his madness had Bilbo realized that the stone was black magic and tried to cleanse the mountain of it. The blood curse had not been connected to the Arkenstone, after all, but by his proximity to massive amounts of gold; thus, the enchantment would not have been lifted with the stone’s destruction.

Thorin hefted Manzarthi up into a battle-ready position and untangled his fingers from Bilbo’s so that he could draw Orcrist with his left hand, grateful then, as he oft had been, that his training had been so rigorous that he could fight just as well with his non-dominant arm, and then started to sprint toward the Gallery, “Du Bekâr!”

The Gallery was packed with Dwarrow, Elves, Men, and even a pair of Maiar - though Thorin had expected Tharkûn to poke his nose into the situation, Bilbo had made no mention of Radagast coming to their aid, so how the Brown Wizard had learned of Dáin’s treason was anyone’s guess. Thorin located his sister in only a few seconds’ worth of searching, fighting side by side with Thranduil of all people, the amber blade of her axe glowing with magic; Dís fought Dáin’s soldiers as if she were possessed, her features twisted in an enraged snarl. Though the children must have been secured in Dale before they marched on the mountain, Thorin counted nearly all of the two hundred adults from the Blue Mountains present. In the middle of the fray, Glóin and Bombur’s wives were standing back to back, Gélaní cutting down all who came close with her broadsword and Rínalí swinging her warhammer with deadly efficiency.

Bard was there, too, with Sigrid fighting beside him, her flaxen hair pulled up into a tight bun that was threaded through with the black ribbon Men often used when they were in mourning - Thorin hoped that she simply refused to remove it until she saw Fíli alive with her own eyes and that the ribbon was not an indication that something terrible had befallen Bain or Tilda. Elrond and Galadriel had come, as Bilbo had relayed they would, and were expertly leading a much larger contingent of Elves from the Golden Wood than Thorin had expected.

If they had not been bolstered by the magic of the Lonely Mountain for months already, Dáin’s lot would not have stood a chance with such a massive force opposing them; as it was, they were only barely losing and had, unwittingly, formed a kind of barricade between the Company and their allies.

Thorin stood just inside the Gallery of the Kings and called upon his Stonesense to summon a fraction of the power of his mountain kingdom into his core, using it to amplify his voice so that he would be heard over the clamor, “Shazara!”

The effect was immediate, all turning toward him to stare with varying degrees of shock. The Dwarrow, at least, recognized the Royal Axe, and they reacted accordingly to his carrying it. His people from the Blue Mountains were overjoyed by the sight, understanding what its reappearance meant for them as a whole, and a good two-thirds of Dáin’s soldiers stood down completely, at least half of that number letting their weapons clatter to the golden floor. Thranduil and Bard looked relieved - Thorin was certain that this had next to nothing to do with his presence or his being given Manzarthi, and was, instead, a consequence of their having absolute proof that Fíli and Kíli, whom their daughters loved, lived - and Tharkûn was basically radiating an aura of utter satisfaction.

Dáin was, predictably, apoplectic, “No! I buried you alive! You could not have possibly escaped from the Hall of Earth!”

Nearly everyone looked horrified by this admission, but Thorin simply raised an eyebrow at his cousin, “I am King and this is my mountain, Dáin; there was a way out which you did not account for.”

“Then I’ll take your head now!” Dáin roared and tried to rush at him, only to be intercepted by a handful of his own soldiers. “Move, you wretches!”

“No,” a Dwarf whom Thorin did not recognize rejoined. “You have dishonored us all, False King, but no more.”

“Ibzig zu,” Dáin spat out, turning to attack the soldier instead

What followed was nothing less than sheer chaos. Over half of Dáin’s army turned on the hundred or so who chose to remain loyal to Thorin’s cousin, many scooping their weapons back up just in time to fend off brutal attacks from their once comrades-in-arms. A number of the Company’s kin and allies took advantage of the bedlam to make their way over to where they were, striking down those who tried to hinder their progress.

“Fíli!” Sigrid cried out, dancing her way through the fight with an admirable grace, even as her harried father did his best to catch back up with her.

“Sig!” Fíli started toward her and then noticed what Thorin had only half a moment earlier, that one of the Iron Hills’ soldiers had spun in the Woman’s direction, brandishing a flanged mace at her. Fíli pulled a knife fashioned from cobalt out of his belt and threw it with unerring accuracy at the soldier’s unguarded hand, sinking it deep into its target, “Sigrid!”

Sigrid, to her credit, reacted to the threat with appropriate speed and force, plunging her sword directly into the howling Dwarf’s neck. She left it there, allowing the traitor to choke to death on his own blood, as her attention had been caught by Fíli reaching her side. Fíli sheathed his own sword and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down into a relieved kiss that she returned with delight.

Thorin did not heave a great sigh of exasperation, as he would have liked, but only because he was preoccupied with ensuring his nephew and future niece were not viciously murdered in their distraction. Bard joined him in his efforts to defend the two lovegems a few moments later, looking as grim as he ever did, if far less timeworn in raiment befitting the King of Dale.

“I am very glad to see you alive,” Bard said to him, sword flashing as he struck down a Dwarf headed toward Fíli’s exposed back. “Your cousin is a nightmare.”

“I am well aware of that,” Thorin replied, voice wry.

Bard’s tone softened then, “Tilda has missed watching you work your magic with glass.”

Thorin smiled at that, remembering the long afternoons he had spent pulling glass in Lake-town to create baubles for Bard’s youngest. He had first made use of the smithy generously provided by the Master to show Bilbo his Craft, choosing to shape glass, instead of any of the metals he was more proficient with, because it required less heat and Thorin had worried over his Burglar’s more sensitive skin. Bilbo had been about as interested in forging as Thorin was in gardening, but Tilda had been enthralled by the techniques he used to shape a set of multi-hued glass buttons to replace the ones Bilbo had lost in the Misty Mountains and Thorin had been glad to concede to her pleading to show her more of the art. On the last afternoon before the Company had departed Esgaroth for Erebor, Thorin had allowed her to pull glass with his close supervision and realized that she had an aptitude for the Craft that bordered on innate, a rarity amongst Men.

“She has a natural talent for glassworking that ought to be honed, Bard,” Thorin said. “I would be glad to continue instructing her, once this mess has been cleaned up.”

For all that Bard had not been particularly fond of Thorin’s plan to disturb the Dragon, he had not protested against any of his children spending time with the Company, so it was not really a surprise when he accepted Thorin’s offer, “Tilda shall be nearly as overjoyed by that as she was when Rorc flew into my sitting room and announced your survival.”

Whether it was a true apprenticeship or simple lessons would be up to Tilda, of course, and Thorin would be pleased with either, though if she agreed to be his apprentice then it would grant her true citizenship within his kingdom, like Sigrid would have when she married his nephew.

An arrow of jade pierced through one of the brown eyes of the soldier that Thorin meant to fend off, and Thorin followed the bolt’s trajectory back to see that his younger nephew had somehow managed to clamber atop the knee of one of the fourteen-foot green granite statues that flanked the Gallery’s northern entrance. Kíli was determinedly picking off those loyal to Dáin, one by one, with the silver and gold twixenwood bow Mahal had provided for him. The arrow in the dead Dwarf’s eye wrenched itself free as Thorin watched and soared back into the quiver it had come from as if magnetized.

Despite the advantage the height gave him, it was not a safe place for Kíli to be, and alarm crashed through Thorin when he realized that the only archer still on Dáin’s side had notched an arrow in her bow and trained it at his nephew’s head, “Kíli!”

Kíli reacted to Thorin’s shout instinctively, raising an arm to block the shot before he even realized it was coming, but the bolt did not find its mark. A second arrow pierced through the first whilst it was still airborne, knocking it several feet off course so that it landed harmlessly on the ground. Thorin jerked his head around in time to see Thranduil, the Elven-king much closer than he had been minutes earlier, shift the aim of his bow to the Dwarrowdam and fire again, felling the would-be murderer of Thorin’s impetuous nephew.

“Nice shot,” Kíli called down cheerfully.

“Do you have any idea how exposed you are up there?” Thranduil snapped back. “Get down at once.”

It was true, but Thorin did not approve of the Elf ordering his nephew about, even if said Elf had saved Kíli’s life. Before he could interject and rudely tell Thranduil to mind his damn own business, Dís arrived.

“Yes, do get down,” Dís instructed. “For Mahal’s sake, Kíli, you have put my daughter through enough without getting yourself killed for a second time.”

Oh, Dís had met Tauriel.

“Amad!” Kíli slid down off the statue of his great, great grandfather, kneeling as all kings must before their Maker, and into his mother’s bone-crushing embrace.

“My brave, reckless boy,” Dís murmured into her younger son’s dark hair. “I thought I had lost you and your brother, both.”

“You didn’t lose us,” Fíli had, evidently, decided to surface for air and moved over to join them, one arm still firmly around Sigrid’s waist. “Idadith saw to that, Amad.”

“Fíli,” Dís pulled her eldest close as well.

Watching his little sister hold her sons tight, when for so long he had feared that they would never again see each other in this world, brought tears to Thorin’s eyes. As the battle was nearly won and the fighting confined away from their position, Thorin sheathed Orcrist so that he could dry his cheeks with his sleeve.

“You’re going to be a grandmother,” Kíli proclaimed, without an ounce of tact.

“Oh, I know,” Dís returned in a dry tone. “If I were not so pleased by the idea, I would be beating your uncle senseless for not keeping a closer eye on you.”

Thorin laughed wetly, “You have met Kíli; it would not have mattered if I had.”

“Hey,” Kíli protested mildly, “I’m not that bad.”

“You convinced an entire town to riot when you were twenty, Kee,” Fíli reminded.

Kíli shrugged, “The mayor was an arse.”

Dís pressed her forehead to each of her sons and then walked over to where Thorin stood, “Nadad.”

“I am so sorry, Namad,” Thorin said.

“Shut up, you stupid, wonderful idiot,” Dís ordered. “You brought us home, Thorin.”

And then she lunged into a hug, Thorin wrapping his arms around her automatically as he told her, “I have sorely missed you, Dís.”

“And I you,” Dís returned softly.

“Is Tauriel alright?” Thorin heard Kíli ask.

“She is waiting for you in Dale, guarded by Legolas,” Thranduil revealed. “That was the compromise we made. She wanted to come here with us, but the pregnancy has been hard on her and leaving the Woodland Realm at all was a risk.”

“Because of me,” Kíli said ruefully. “Because I haven’t been with her.”

“Because Dáin is a liar whose head I should very much like to see on a pike,” Thranduil countered.

“I cannot believe I allowed you to go on a quest without me and all three of you managed to stumble upon your Ones,” Dís grumbled, pulling back so that she could punch Thorin in the arm. “And you had the audacity to get married when I was not present to witness it.”

“It was something we dared not put off, seeing as we planned to steal from a Dragon and almost certainly wake it up,” Thorin explained, by way of an apology.

“And you killed the beast in this very hall,” Dís stated, words infused with pride. “My big brother slayed the last of the Great Drakes.”

“Only with help,” Thorin related. “Bilbo distracted Smaug so I could strike the weak spot that Girion first created.”

“Where is your Hobbit?” Dís questioned, glancing around.

Thorin then came to the horrid realization that his husband, who had been right next to him when Sigrid and Bard had reached the northern end of the Gallery, had absconded while Thorin was focused on other things.

“How does he do that?” Kíli demanded.

Before Thorin could really sink into the rising panic, Bilbo’s voice rang out, clear and calm, “Thorin!”

Bilbo was in the Mahal-damned center of the dwindling fray, the fucking Arkenstone in his hands, though how he had managed to secure the accursed thing was a mystery, and Thorin just about had a heart attack.

“Give that back, you miserable little rat!” Dáin screeched, much too close to Bilbo for Thorin’s peace of mind.

Bilbo rolled his eyes, utterly unimpressed, “You should work on your repertoire of insults, Dáin, that one’s a bit tired.”

And then he pitched the Arkenstone over the chaos in a perfect arc that ended with Thorin snatching the false jewel from the air.

“No!” Dáin pounded his warhammer so hard against the ground that the shaft cracked nearly in two.

Knowing that nearly everyone was watching, Thorin kept his eyes fixed on his cousin as he let the Arkenstone fall from his palm to the floor. He raised Manzarthi up and then brought her back down to cleave the rock in two. A mere heartbeat later, magic exploded from the remnants, black and terrible, and then dissipated as the halves crumbled to dust.

Where the rock had been, Mithril in a rainbow of colors began to spread through the gold-coated ground, curling and spiking to form both fantastic geometric patterns and sprawling vines with hundreds of purple flowers. Though Thorin had always been possessed of a profound sense of Erebor’s stone, the connection was amplified beyond belief as the darkness was driven out by the purity of the Mithril, strength he had never before known surging through his body even as his core was flooded with Stone Magic.

Thorin did not get the opportunity to wonder at this change, because Dáin, driven by wrath, abandoned his warhammer to seize hold of Bilbo’s throat.

“Dáin!” Thorin shouted, rushing forward and then freezing when Dáin tightened his grip so that Bilbo could no longer draw air. “Let him go.”

“Ha!” Dáin barked out, cruel and furious. “You have taken what I love most from me, Thorin Oakenshield, and I shall take your heart from you before I return to the stone.”

Dread crept into Thorin’s heart like a poison, “I will let you live, you and those loyal to you. Take as much of the gold as you can carry, take whatever treasures please you, Dáin, but let him go.”

“No,” Dáin refused.

“Release Bilbo Baggins this instant, Dáin Ironfoot!”

Thorin barely registered that Mahal’s command had been heard by all, or that almost every person in the Gallery knelt down in homage to the Vala, because Dáin had dropped Bilbo in his shock and the Hobbit collapsed to the floor, gasping. Thorin darted over to him, falling to his knees and setting his axe down heavily so that he could pull Bilbo into his arms. There were bruises already beginning to form on his husband’s neck, and it was such a painful reminder of what had transpired on the battlements that Thorin wanted to weep.

“I-” Bilbo coughed, struggling to steady his breathing. “I’m alright, Khaeluh.”

Thorin was too overcome to respond to the attempt to reassure him.

“It cannot be,” Dáin said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“You doubt the senses I gave you?”

“You abandoned us,” Dáin cried out, sacrilegiously indignant, “For over nine hundred years!”

“No,” Mahal declared, his voice a balm to Thorin’s soul, as it was to all Dwarrow who heard it. “I would never abandon my sons and daughters. I have ever been with you, though you could not perceive my presence, for my power over this world was bound by the Enemy. Thorin and Bilbo destroyed those bindings, at great personal cost to them both, and I can speak to my children on Arda once more. Never again will my absence be felt.”

“Thorin destroyed your Arkenstone,” Dáin ranted. “He has no right to rule!”

“Thorin destroyed Sauron’s Arkenstone, the last of the Enemy’s foul magic, and he did it on my orders. Thorin Oakenshield’s right to rule is his very blood, for he descends from the Eternal King, and could never come from a rock.” Mahal countered. “Your crimes, however, are beyond reckoning, Dáin. You attempted to unmake Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli.” 

That particular facet of his cousin’s misdeeds did not settle well on those listening, Thorin noted.

Mahal forged on, “You attempted to unmake Durin, who beyond being my cherished firstborn, is the Conduit for the renewal of all Dwarven magic. Had you succeeded, it would have meant the end of Dwarrow in Arda. Not a single child more would have been born amongst any of the Clans, those with even middling traces of Stone Magic in their cores would have died immediately, and the very few who lingered to extinction would have lost their ability to Craft.”

The tapestry that Mahal's words wove was unspeakably abhorrent. If Bilbo had not heeded Yavanna’s message of flowers and come for them, every single member of the Company would have perished in that horrible cell and thousands of Dwarrow across Arda would have dropped dead with no warning at all.

“I could have taken the Eternal King’s place!” Dáin insisted.

“No one can take Durin’s place,” Mahal returned heatedly. “And you are a fool to think otherwise. His fëa is different from the rest of my children’s, for within it is braided a shred of my Grace. He is the part of me that can walk this world.”

“You…” Dáin spluttered, “You would tell outsiders such secrets?”

“Keeping such things secret has not served me or my children in this or any Age,” Mahal intoned. “The Song is not meant to be a dozen different strains, sung each on their own, but a great melody harmonious.”

And so, the remaining Sons of Durin had discovered the other halves of their souls in a Hobbit, an Elf, and a Daughter of Man; Bilbo was right, Mahal was not subtle.

“I cannot allow you to live, Dáin Ironfoot,” Mahal pronounced, solemn and grieved, “But neither can I allow you to taint the Halls of Awaiting or go directly to the Mountains of Valinor - the black magic you willingly engaged in shall poison you for time eternal, and the stain on your soul will do harm to all those around you. Your fate can only be this, that you fall forever in the Timeless Void.”

Dáin tried to respond, but instead choked on whatever words he had intended to say, gaping as Mahal’s judgment took effect without delay. From the inside out, he and those who fought with him turned to stone. First appearing just as they had in life, and then eroding, as if whole centuries had passed in the span of a single minute, until nothing but a few dozen seemingly innocuous boulders remained where Dwarrow had once stood.

“Thorin, Bilbo,” Mahal spoke, once it was done. “If you would permit it, there is a gift I would entrust to you.”

Thorin exchanged a brief, bemused look with Bilbo, for he could not conceive of a gift from his Maker that he would not treasure, and then answered, “Of course.”

“Oh,” Bilbo gasped, and his hand flew to his chest, where his core resided beneath his heart. Tears spilled down his cheeks as he smiled up at Thorin and pulled the Dwarf’s hand to the spot, “Can you feel it?”

There was a fluttering beneath his palm, gentle like the wings of a butterfly, that had been present for as long as Thorin had known Bilbo - the souls of their children that had blossomed in his husband’s core on the night that they met. There had always been six seeds to marvel over, but the number had changed, because in that moment Thorin could feel seven.

“Mahal?” Thorin breathed out.

“Guard and guide him, that he might guard and guide all of my children when the time comes,” Mahal instructed. “Durin’s return is long overdue.”

“Aye,” Thorin vowed.

“We will,” Bilbo promised.

“Olórin?” Mahal called then, “Aiwendil?”

“My Lord Aulë,” Tharkûn answered with great respect, surely a novel experience for the Wizard. “What would you direct us to do?”

“Beware Curumo,” Mahal replied, causing the Wizard's face to turn as grey as his robes. “He has forsaken me, the rest of the Valar, and even Eru Ilúvatar. In secret, he allied himself with the Enemy, and even now prepares to use the black magic Sauron taught him to corrupt my Lady Wife’s earth and call forth more creatures of Azog the Defiler’s ilk from the ground. The Uruk-hai are a plague you do not wish to see released upon this world.”

Tharkûn seemed heartbroken by the news, Elrond and Galadriel bereft at his side, and Thorin remembered that the four had been great friends for thousands of years, their faith in one another implicit. How did one reconcile such a betrayal, when your every instinct rebelled against it?

“Has he cast black magic yet, Milord?” Radagast was the one to ask, voice tentative, as if he feared knowing for certain.

“No, but it will be soon,” Mahal told him.

Thorin understood why this would be of import to the rest of the White Council. If they must strike him down, then sending Saruman to be imprisoned in Valinor was not nearly as terrible as condemning him to the Abyss, and love that had endured Ages without faltering was not easily cast aside.

“We will see that he falls no further,” Tharkûn swore.

“Be well,” Mahal bid them.

For a long minute, the silence was deafening, and then Dís rose and marched herself over to where Thorin and Bilbo knelt, “So, are there any more surprises you want to throw at me, Nadad?”

“Just one,” Bilbo said, and nudged Thorin, “Right?”

“Right,” Thorin collected his axe and stood, lifting Bilbo to his feet as he did.

Thorin drew Tarbathôn out of the inner pocket of his jerkin, eliciting a gasp from his sister, and strode over to where the unseemly statue of Thrór would have stood had it been finished. He set the miniaturized anvil down with all due care and stepped back. A scant handful of heartbeats later, it had grown thrice as large as it had been in the chamber behind the Northern Drops, the size that the legends Thorin had grown up hearing spoke of.

Thorin looked back to his sister, whose eyes were wide, “Now there are no more surprises.”

This was, of course, the exact moment an Elf sprinted into the Gallery via the southern entrance and called out to Thranduil, “My King, you are needed in Dale right away. Lady Tauriel has gone into labor!”

“Oh, dear,” Bilbo murmured.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The King’s Manor, Dale- 10 Afterlithe, TA 2942 (Shire Reckoning)

The issue, as it turned out, was two-fold. Firstly, that it was over a month too soon for the twins to be born - no Fauntling in the Shire sprouted early, grown of Green Magic as they were, so this mightily concerned Bilbo, even with Óin's assurance that it was not uncommon for those bearing multiple babes to labor early. And secondly, that Tauriel was refusing to enter the birthing chamber before she had confirmation that Kíli was well and would not allow the midwives Thranduil had insisted they bring out of an abundance of caution to assist her.

Kíli had raced from the Gallery of the Kings even before the Elven messenger finished speaking, stealing Dáin's ridiculously sized boar from the stables beside the Mekhêmel and leaving the rest of them to make their own frantic attempts to catch up.

What was normally an hour-long trek was cut in half by their making use of war rams and horses. Bilbo rode behind Thorin on one of the former, an enormous creature with thick sable wool and curled silver horns, clinging to his husband as the ram galloped to the city of Men. It was a horribly turbulent venture that Bilbo did not enjoy in the slightest and, by the time they reached the King's Manor in the very center of Dale, he could hardly believe that he had once complained so much about riding on Myrtle.

Once they had hastily dismounted from their steeds, Bilbo fighting down a powerful wave of nausea, Bard escorted them directly into his grand house. Or, at least, he tried to, though his efforts were hindered by Kíli and Thranduil darting ahead of their host and everyone else following suit - Bilbo would have to apologize for their collective rudeness when things were a bit less fraught.

They heard Tauriel before they saw her, the sound of her voice emanating from behind a pair of closed wooden doors at the end of the hall.

“No!” she declared to whomever else was in the room with her, “I will not go anywhere until I know that Kíli is well. Either you bring him here to me, or I will go to the mountain myself, Legolas.”

She sounded scared, Bilbo realized with a jolt. And why would she not be, given her alarming circumstances? Months spent grieving the untimely loss of the father of her unborn daughters, only to learn that he was actually alive, imprisoned in a fortress kingdom which she had no hope of breaching with her health being as poor as it was. And this was before one considered that she had gone into premature labor; she had to be in a considerable amount of pain due to the imminent arrival of the twins.

Kíli sprinted ahead of the Elven-king and burst through the pine doors, “Tauriel!”

“Kíli!” came a cry so relieved that Bilbo’s heart ached to hear it.

Bilbo, Thorin at his side, entered the room in Thranduil’s wake, Fíli, Dís, Bard, and Sigrid hot on their heels, and a considerable number of others only just behind the four of them. In the perhaps three seconds this had taken, Kíli and Tauriel had both sunk down to the carpeted floor of the sitting room to hold one another, Legolas and a trio of female Elves, whom Bilbo assumed were the aforementioned midwives, hovering over them in concern.

“I thought you were dead!” Tauriel sobbed into Kíli’s shoulder, gripping his tunic as if she feared that he would vanish from her side.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Kíli was murmuring into Tauriel’s red-gold hair, tears flowing freely down his face, “I’m here, Amrâlimê, I’m alive. I’ll never leave you again. I’m here.”

“Adar,” Legolas greeted Thranduil, demonstrably overwhelmed by the situation.

“All will be well, Nín Pînlass,” Thranduil promised his son, and then gracefully lowered himself to the ground beside the young lovers, to the utter shock of the gaping midwives, so that he could speak to Tauriel, “Nín Lasbelinêl, you must go to the birthing chamber now. I can feel your daughters’ magic sparking. They are ready to meet you and Kíli - to delay any further could cause all three of you grave harm.”

“Yes, Adar.” Tauriel gasped in pain as a contraction hit, one hand flying to her swollen abdomen, “I… Kíli, I need you. Come with me?”

“Of course, I will,” Kíli agreed quickly.

“You cannot,” one of the midwives declared, visibly appalled by the proposal. “It is highly improper for the father to be present during delivery.”

This made absolutely no sense at all to Bilbo. Though his knowledge of pregnancy was fairly abstract, he could not conceive of a good reason that any laboring mother should be deprived of the comfort that her partner could provide during such a trying time. If it was a matter of propriety, then Dwarrow who bathed communally and thought next to nothing of nudity would hardly care one whit.

“I will not leave her,” Kíli asserted in a tone that was so stern it left no room for any kind of dissension.

Bilbo had not realized that his Little Raven was capable of sounding so forbidding.

“Do not argue with him,” Thranduil ordered.

The midwife did not approve, exactly, but she relented, allowing Kíli to keep pace with Tauriel as she escorted her from the parlor, the other two midwives following after them. Once they had departed, there was nothing left but for Bilbo and the others to wait anxiously.

Someone must have alerted their minders to the presence of their parents, because nearly as soon as Kíli and the Elves left, Bard’s younger children, six plump Dwarflings of various ages, and one barely grown Dwarf with hair like dragonflame and a thin layer of fuzz on his chin came tumbling in to greet them all.

Bilbo easily recognized Gimli even before the lad shouted, “Adad!” and leapt into Glóin’s arms, after all, he had been shown the expertly rendered sketches in his brother’s cherished locket countless times on the way to Erebor during the Quest.

“Gimli, Inùdoyuh.” Glóin crushed his son against his chest, lifting the lad several inches into the air in his jubilation. “I have missed you so!”

“You are never allowed to go anywhere without me again,” Gimli declared, voice somewhat muffled by his father’s leather vest, but still intelligible.

The six Dwarflings ran straight for Bombur, tackling him in their exuberance. Bofur laughed at his brother’s plight and then found himself, in turn, buried under Dwarflings, though his cheer did not dim in the slightest even after being bowled over. Bifur managed to hold on to a bit more dignity, greeting the bairns one at a time in Westron - which shocked and delighted them - and knocking his forehead against each of theirs with only slightly less force than he would use on an adult Dwarf.

To the immense surprise of the Dwarrow who were not part of the Company, the little Princess Tilda, after ensuring that her father was unharmed by the recent skirmish, beelined for Thorin and latched onto him, “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!”

“Hello, Tilda.” Thorin grinned wide as he hugged her back. “I am very glad to see you again.”

“How are you alive?” Tilda asked, pulling back to look up at the Dwarven King, and Bilbo realized she had gone through a growth spurt since last he saw her, for she was then only two inches shorter in height than Thorin, when before she had been just barely taller than Bilbo. “After the Battle, Da, Bilbo, and Gandalf all saw that you were dead - your hearts were not beating!”

“My cousin used a very dark form of magic to brew a potion that made it seem as if we were no longer alive,” Thorin related, “Because Dáin wished to rule Erebor as King.”

“I don’t see why,” Tilda huffed in indignation. “Being a princess is no fun at all - they won’t let me do anything interesting now. And Da says the paperwork of being King is going to kill him sooner rather than later.”

“It will,” Bard commented dryly, to everyone's amusement.

“Does any more of that potion yet exist?” Gandalf asked gravely, his aura shaded with displeasure, and Bilbo realized that his godfather probably knew exactly what kind of fell tonic could conceal the life of those drugged with it.

“I don’t know,” Thorin admitted. “If there is more, it will be found within the Hall of Earth, which is half-buried under stone thanks to Dáin. That is where his sorcerer, Frín, was housed.”

“I cleansed the worst of it with Green Magic,” Bilbo said, unwilling to speak about the specifics of what the golden cauldron had contained with children present, “But the smear of darkness on that whole sector of the Kingdom is immense.”

“I will do what I can to chase the dark out before I must leave for Isengard, Your Majesty.” It was less of an offer of aid and more a statement of fact; fortunately, Thorin did not seem inclined just then to protest Gandalf’s bossiness. The Wizard turned to Bilbo next, “I need you to know that a single line of text hastily scribbled down on a torn piece of parchment does not constitute proper communication, Bilbo Baggins.”

“I told you exactly where I was going and why,” Bilbo returned, “And I let your moths follow me to the mountain so you could keep track of me.”

“The entire note was less than ten words!” Gandalf exclaimed.

“Really?” Fíli remarked in curiosity. “What did it say?”

“‘Godfather. Gone to Erebor to save my Dwarrow. Bilbo.’,” Gandalf recited moodily.

There was a brief, stunned silence that shattered into uproarious peals of mirth, several members of the Company laughing so hard they started to cry.

“I was in a bit of a rush,” Bilbo pointed out, “Yavanna’s message to me regarding the matter was quite clear, you know.”

“You should be glad I was able to decipher the meaning of Her arrangement of flowers and greenery,” Gandalf told him. “A number of the Elves thought you had gone mad with grief before I explained.”

Bilbo did not deign to respond to that ridiculousness.

“The Green Lady truly spoke to you through flowers?” Thorin’s sister, whom Bilbo had not yet been properly introduced to thanks to all the earlier commotion, asked. “Roäc told us that Yavanna communicated with you, of course, but not how.”

“She did,” Bilbo responded. “Every plant in Arda carries its own meaning, and when combined with others the resulting display will tell a story. The Language of Flowers predates even the creation of my own people, as Yavanna taught it to the Ents first.”

“Namad,” Thorin said then, “This is Bilbo Baggins, my husband and Consort, who served as the Burglar of my Company during our Quest. Bilbo, Ghivashel, this is my sister, the Princess Dís Amberaxe.”

“It’s lovely to meet you,” Bilbo stated. “Thorin spoke often of you during our travels.”

Bilbo knew quite a lot about Dís, daughter of Marrís, actually, as nearly every story of Thorin’s youth had featured both of his siblings heavily - the loss of Frerin at the Battle of Azanulbizar had resulted in Thorin focusing even more intently on his widowed sister’s happiness and health. Dís was as accomplished a smith as Thorin was, a devastatingly skilled warrior, and was the only Dwarf who had ever managed to pull sunlight into a gem besides a diamond, drawing a single strong beam of sunshine into a blade of carved amber; this last had earned her the use name Amberaxe before she had even come of age.

“At your service,” Dís gave the traditional greeting, nodding regally at him. “I have heard much of you, as well, for word of your great deeds during the Quest to reclaim Erebor and your journey to Mordor has traveled far. Now, I find the debt I already owed you has increased a hundredfold - you not only saved our lives in the present but helped secure the future of the entire Dwarven race.”

Bilbo so wished that the Dwarrow in his life would stop insisting that they were indebted to him. The culpability lay at Aulë’s feet, Bilbo was sure, as the Stone King had created a people who generally strove to be honorable to a fault in all things, just as He was.

“I’m pretty sure there was a clause in the contract I signed that said I would render services as required,” Bilbo determined, “So you owe me no debt at all, actually.”

“The contract was only valid up until Erebor was reclaimed, Laddie,” Balin rejoined in a still amused tone.

“Which, technically, did not truly occur until an hour ago,” Bilbo decided. “Did Aulë not instruct us to take the Kingdom back when we discovered Durin’s Anvil?”

There, that would do it - no Dwarf would be willing to protest any edict of their Maker’s any time soon, so there would be no more talk of debts. If he could get people to stop discussing how he had destroyed the Ring, life would be magnificent.

Dís raised an eyebrow at Thorin in an unspoken question.

“Yes,” Thorin said with mock gravitas, “He is always like this.”

Bilbo huffed and poked his husband in the side.

“Then I adore him,” Dís smiled at Bilbo with genuine warmth, which was quite gratifying. “He is more than a match for you, Nadad.”

“Can you tell us what the purple flowers Aulë put into the Gallery floor mean, Bilbo?” Sigrid asked.

“They’re morning glories,” Bilbo explained, “Purple ones are a symbol of royalty. Hobbits don't have royalty, of course, so the purple variety is rarely grown in the Shire, with the blue and pink ones being far more common a sight during summer and early autumn.”

“Is the Thainship not passed through the Took bloodline from father to son?” Dís questioned, “With the Thain serving as Yavanna’s Regent on Arda?”

“Well, yes,” Bilbo admitted, “But the Thain’s role is primarily to regulate the Green Magic reserves in the Shire and to direct our festivals - he does not have a say in any of our life choices beyond that, excepting in times of great evil, such as when the Fell Winter occurred. If the Thain tells us to do something ridiculous, orders us to plant tomatoes in winter, for example, then we can collectively ignore him with no repercussions.”

“I promise to always defer to your judgment on the proper seasons for planting green things,” Thorin teased him.

The conversation ebbed and flowed after that. Óin meandered over to tend to Bilbo's sore throat with the gruff affection that he was known for, diligently spreading a healing paste over the areas of the Hobbit’s neck that were certainly bruised, judging by the way they ached, Thorin monitoring the treatment with an intense focus. Bilbo met Gimli and Bombur’s brood, delighting them all with the tale of the Trolls turning to stone. Tilda accepted Thorin’s offer to properly teach her the art of Glassmithing with stars in her eyes. Galadriel took a few minutes to inform Bilbo that she had arranged for his oak sapling to be transported to Erebor with all due care and pressed a little wooden chest into his hands that contained four golden mallorn seeds, one tree to guard each corner of the garden that would be his - Bilbo barely blinked at the acknowledgement that she had Seen his future and thanked her profusely for the gift.

Finally, one of the midwives, wearing a reassuring smile, returned to fetch Kíli and Tauriel’s closest kin from the parlor. Bilbo, Thorin, Dís, Fíli, Thranduil, and Legolas followed her to the birthing chamber and found that their long wait had been well worth it.

There was an infant each in the arms of the new parents, both sporting thick crops of red hair a few shades darker than Tauriel’s and glowing with Elven Grace.

“Oh, Kee,” Fíli breathed out in wonder, drinking in the miraculous sight of his newborn nieces as eagerly as any parched individual would gulp down water. “They’re perfect.”

“Aren’t they?” Kíli responded, drowning in happiness. “This is Ilmarë, my firstborn. Tauriel is holding our youngest, Isilmë.”

The names meant ‘starlight’ and ‘moonlight’ in Quenya, the ancient language of the Elves only utilized in the modern age for the most formal occasions and for record keeping. Not many non-Elves knew anything at all of Quenya; Bilbo being an uncommon exception due to his scholarly pursuits, and even what he knew was a pittance. That Kíli and Tauriel had named their daughters after the first romantic conversation they had shared would be a secret even fewer would be aware of.

“They’re lovely names,” Bilbo praised. 

“Their cores are exceptionally strong,” Legolas said in amazement, “Full of Grace and Stone Magic both.”

“Yes,” Dís agreed, “They will be as formidable as their parents, and probably just as prone to mischief as their father. Welcome to the world, Sigin-nuthâh.”

“Len suilon, ill -O nín- iell,” Thranduil intoned a traditional Sindarin blessing, “Lothron pân I eraid -O cín cuil- N elias.”

It was worth it, Bilbo thought, everything he had endured was worth it, when he got this at the end - all the ones whom he loved alive, safe and happy and thriving, their futures full of light so powerful that no shadow could touch it. Two weeks earlier, he had been in full mourning, Fading, and how radically things had changed. He would get to stay with the thirteen Dwarrow whom he had claimed as kin, he would get to see Kíli and Tauriel’s beautiful little girls grow up, he would get to sow the seeds of his heart in Erebor and watch his own children blossom, and he would get to spend the rest of his days with the One he loved above all else.

Thorin curled an arm around Bilbo’s shoulders and spoke, his words profuse with all the love, hope, and incandescent joy Bilbo felt too, “I, Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain, hereby welcome the Princess Ilmarë and the Princess Isilmë into the Line of Durin, which is their birthright, as divine gifts of Mahal and Eru. For as long as I and those of my line reign, they will be treasured, for they are members of my House. Their troubles will be my troubles, their enemies will be my enemies, and any harm done to them is harm done to me. Never shall I forsake them under stone or sky, so mote it be.”

And so it was.

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Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Ghivashel [Treasure of all Treasures; ‘Beloved’]
• Khaeluh [My Great Wolf]
• Nala-dum Durinul [Path Halls of the Durin Line]
• Du Bekâr! [To Arms!]
• Tharkûn [Gandalf]
• Shazara [Be Silent]
• Manzarthi [Cause to Govern]
• Ibzig zu! [Damn You!]
• Tarbathôn [Cause to Craft]
• Amad [Mother]
• Namad [Sister]
• Nadad [Brother]
• Idadith [Little Uncle]
• Mekhêmel [Great Gates]
• Amrâlimê  [Love-of-Me]
• Adad [Father]
• Inùdoyuh [My Son]
• Sigin-nuthâh [My Granddaughters]

Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Adar [Father]
• Nín Pînlass [My Little Leaf]
• Nín Lasbelinêl [My Autumn Star]
• Len suilon, ill -O nín- iell [I greet you (formal), daughters of my daughter]
• Lothron pân I eraid -O cín cuil- N elias [May all the days of your lives be blessed]

Flower Meanings - https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

• Purple Morning Glory [Royalty]

Chapter Text

Part Seven - Ever, Ever On

The Consort’s Garden, Erebor - 30 Forelithe, FO 10 (Shire Reckoning)

“Papa?” Durin called from up on the terrace, “Papa, are you out here? Adad and I have something to show you!”

“Down here, Durin,” Bilbo replied, brushing the dirt off his hands and standing up from the patch of strawberries he was harvesting to see his eldest son scampering down the twisting white marble steps from the terrace and into the garden proper, Thorin following the lad at a more dignified pace.

The Consort’s Garden, as it was called, had been the very first portion of the Carven Stone Apartments, the personal residence of the King and his spouse within the Royal Mansion, to be finished after Thorin had ordered the restructuring of what was to meant to be the abode of the Royal Family and the Company - Dáin had been remodeling the Royal Mansion prior to his death, but all those plans had been scrapped with prejudice. The Dwarrow involved, and there had been many, had worked tirelessly to design and construct a garden for Bilbo that surpassed every other in Arda where beauty was concerned and rivaled even the grandest in scale.

From the kitchen that Thorin had built for Bilbo’s personal use, one stepped through a set of doors fashioned from gold and a triangular puzzle of colored glass and out onto the terrace. It was a vast space that overlooked the rest of the garden, lined with herb and spice boxes, small plots of tea leaves and the pipeweed Bilbo favored, and lattices of thick emerald ivy. Several wrought iron tables were spaced out upon it, so that Bilbo could host large garden parties whenever he pleased, and special waterproof chests held all the gardening tools he could possibly need. Under the terrace, hidden by a shimmering black curtain, was a closed cave system that was lit with a carefully transported group of glow-worms where Bilbo had cultivated twenty different little groves of mushrooms.

At the base of the marble staircase were dozens of geometric flower beds of various sizes, flanked by large plots of earth where berry and vegetable patches flourished. At the heart of the garden, right in the middle of the plethora of flowers and ringed by blue roses, grew the beloved oak tree, twenty feet tall and deeply rooted. Twin streams gurgled on either side of this section of the garden, directed up from the depths of the mountain to pass through his garden and into a lovely shallow pond that was full of rainbow fish, never overflowing thanks to clever Dwarven irrigation techniques. On the eastern end of the garden were seven enormous greenhouses, one specifically designed for citrus fruits and another for the growing of coffea plants and cocoa beans, with great windows of crystal. The western end had the orchards - apple, peach, plum, pear, walnut, cherry, pecan, and chestnut - and several little hills of grass for picnics. At the southern end were situated several giant honeybee hives, where lived the large but gentle insects that Beorn had brought as a gift to pollinate the flowers and to produce vast quantities of lovely honey.

At each corner of the Consort’s Garden grew a golden mallorn, the four together projecting a shield of powerful magic around the entire space - they would never reach their full height, but they would safeguard the garden from malicious sorcery for many generations to come. Beyond this protection, there was a net of blue-tinted Everbright Steel encasing the entirety of the garden, a special metal of Dwarven conception that absorbed light instead of reflecting it, never rusted, and could only be cut by Mithril.

It was Bilbo’s absolute favorite place in all of Erebor; he and Thorin had welcomed five of their six children into the world by Sowing two of their seven Soulseeds into the fertile earth under the roots of the oak and, come Blotmath, they would be welcoming three more.

“Papa, look what I made for you!” Durin proudly presented a dagger to Bilbo. “It’s your Lithe present.”

It was an incredible bit of craftsmanship, the dagger, with a sheath of bright green-gold, a golden pommel shaped like a rosebud, and the crossguard fashioned into a blooming rose with outstretched leaves. The grip was a spiral of reddish-brown oak with thin braids of gold winding along the grooves and, when he pulled at the hilt to free it from its scabbard, Bilbo discovered that the blade was made of shining Mithril etched with dozens of tiny roses on thorny vines. Bilbo could tell just by touching it that the dagger had not been crafted in a forge - at nine, Durin was still much too young for smithing of any kind, beyond watching his father do so on occasion - but with a stunning combination of Stone and Green Magics.

“It’s magnificent, dearling,” Bilbo praised, truthfully a bit stunned by his child’s rapidly growing proficiency with magic.

This was not a new sensation, as all eleven of the children in the Royal Family of Erebor were profoundly talented in the divine arts of their peoples. Ilmarë, Isilmë, and Rilíen - Kíli and Tauriel’s son who had been born nearly five years after his elder sisters - had all the gifts that came with possessing the Grace of an Elf, robust Stonesense, and every long-lost attribute of Stonesight. Fíli and Sigrid’s six- and four-year-old daughters, Freya and Dreya, had both manifested Stonetouch in their cradles, summoning every shiny bit and bob that caught their attention; their parents had quickly found it necessary to lock all weaponry and sharp objects up, lest their little ones decide they wished to play with things they ought not. Bilbo and Thorin’s own sons and daughters could call upon everything the earth and stone had to offer with an ease that was startling, with Durin surpassing them all.

“I named it ‘Agtathmi,” Durin told him excitedly, “Because you tricked the Dragon with your clever riddles!”

“I love it, Durin, thank you,” Bilbo slid the dagger back into its sheath and pulled his son into a hug. 

Durin beamed up at him in delight, “Do you think that Amadel will grow more of Her rainbow roses tomorrow? Those are my favorite!”

The multi-hued blossoms were a new flower for a new Age, a symbol of hope and joy that, thus far, had only ever bloomed during the three days of Lithe. More magical than even blue roses were, the gift from Yavanna was utterly priceless, for a single dried petal placed in a home would drive away all dark magic for as long as the petal remained present.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Bilbo said, running a hand through his son’s ebony hair. “By the by, why are you with your Adad and not your tutor?”

“I made Teacher Vestrí cry again,” Durin revealed without a trace of shame. “I told him the histories he was trying to teach me were wrong, and that Adadel does not approve of propo… pro-pa-ga-ting false information. Uncle Nori took me to Adad then.”

Bilbo exchanged a long-suffering look with Thorin, “I see.”

Durin, though he did not yet truly remember his past lives beyond the brief flashes of memory that came to him directly from Aulë while he slept, instinctively knew when he was being given an inaccurate accounting of the bygone days he had experienced firsthand and corrected the errors automatically. Since the Dwarrow of those times had possessed the unfortunate tendency to jealously guard their secrets from even others of their own race, Durin had caused many of his tutors to furiously curse their ancestors’ taciturn natures and incited a mass revision of the history texts and tomes within Erebor. Only on a single occasion had one of Durin’s teachers reacted in true anger and tried to strike Durin for contradicting his lesson, but Nori - who had decided without prompting that protecting Durin from the shadows was his sacred duty in very the moment that Bilbo had placed his son in his brother’s arms for the first time - had gutted the Dwarf before he could land the blow.

“Where are my sisters?” Durin asked, casting his gaze around in search of the seven year-old triplets. “Aren’t they done with their morning lessons with Uncle Ori?”

“They are,” Bilbo answered. “Balin and Dori took Melilot, Ottilie, and Lillibet to the Tailor’s Guild to collect their dresses for the upcoming festival days. They will not be back any time soon, I’m sure, as the girls are very good at convincing your uncles to detour for toys and sweets.” At his son’s pout, he added, “But your little brothers shall be waking from the naps in just a few minutes. Why don’t we collect Thrindin and Thraidin from the nursery and have lunch at one of the eateries in the Royal Bazaar?”

In the decade since it had been reclaimed, Erebor had been fully restored to its former glory; with the oldest three of its mines, drained of its wealth long ago, made rich with Mithril upon the destruction of the Arkenstone, the grandeur of the fortress kingdom had become a legendary thing. After the breaking of the bindings, there was a great increase in fertility amongst Aulë’s people, with a record-breaking number of full-term pregnancies and healthy Dwarflings born every year since - Glóin and Gélaní had even been blessed with a second child, a baby girl they had named Gléna. Durin had not been the only child Carved from the sacred stone produced by the Rock Creche, though he was the first, his fëa transferred from Bilbo’s core into the green granite body that Thorin had painstakingly shaped during a truly remarkable rite of Stone Magic. Despite the ceremony previously being the sole province of royalty, Dwalin and Ori had been called to the Creche twice to Carve their sons, Dravin and Korvin, Bifur had Carved his little girl, Aralís, all on his own, and several other Dwarrow from Ered Luin had been summoned to take the sacrosanct walk via the restored Hall of Earth to the Northern Drops. The dramatic swelling in the number of Dwarven Pebbles combined with the droves of Dwarrow from other clans flocking to swear themselves to the true King meant that the population of Erebor had grown exponentially.

As prosperous and bustling as the Kingdom was, it was hardly a surprise that its foremost marketplace, the Royal Bazaar, was as impressive a place as it was, with several hundred shops and stalls, tea houses and taverns, and a wide selection of restaurants lining the seven heptagonal streets.

“Okay, Papa!” Durin agreed, dashing away from his parents and back toward the stairs.

Bilbo collected his basket of strawberries and looked at Thorin, “How was your morning, Khaeluh?”

“Eventful,” Thorin replied, voice wry as he settled his hands on Bilbo’s waist, “Though, I am utterly content now that you are at my side.”

Bilbo smiled at that and pecked his husband on the lips, “I love you.”

“As I love you, Ghivashel,” Thorin kissed him again. “Are you well? You have been unusually quiet today.”

“On this day, ten years ago, I was certain that I had nothing left to live for,” Bilbo relayed, voice soft, “We’ve been so busy this past decade that I never really paid much mind to it before, but this is the anniversary of the last day I mourned you. I’m not upset,” Bilbo reassured him, “I’m just… contemplative and so, so grateful that Yavanna and Aulë intervened, for the world would be far darker had they not.”

Beyond revealing Dáin’s deception and assisting in Bilbo’s rescue of the Company, the intercession of the Green Lady and the Stone King had prevented Saruman’s complete fall from Grace - which would have proven just as devastating to the world as the subversion of the being once called Mairon. The rest of the White Council, Radagast newly added to their number, had stopped Saruman’s descent into madness, and Gandalf had been elevated by Eru to the pivotal rank of the White Wizard in the aftermath.

“So am I,” Thorin told him, pressing his forehead against Bilbo’s.

“Papa! Adad!” Durin cried from where he was leaning over the railing of the terrace. “Come on!”

Bilbo laughed at their son’s impatience, “Ever on?”

“Ever on,” Thorin agreed.

THE END

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Translations (Khuzdûl)

• Ghivashel [Treasure of all Treasures; ‘Beloved’]
• Khaeluh [My Great Wolf]
• Adad [Father]
• ‘Agtathmi [Cause to Riddle]
• Amadel [Great Mother (Yavanna)]
• Adadel [Great Father (Mahal)]

Flower Meanings - https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

• Rainbow Rose [Happiness and Joy]