Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was only towards the end of the lecture that Thorin realised that he had lost the attention of his class.

Well, not the whole class. One of his students was still diligently taking notes, but that was to be expected of his colleague Dori’s younger brother who had grown up immersed in scholarship. The other students’ attitudes left something to be desired, however. From his place in the front of the classroom he could see papers filled with doodles, eyes staring fixedly at laptops while hands were unmoving on the keys, and more than one longing glance thrown towards the cloak.

He sighed to himself as he dismissed them, several unfinished runes on the whiteboard behind him. The class had been expecting a basic overview of dwarven runes, how to shape them, how they differed from the basic elvish version.

Instead, Thorin had begun his class talking about the purpose of runes, the way they lived, how they were not just dead scratches in stone or paper, the way they changed things.

He’d begun by talking about magic. And he’d seen the interest in his class die in front of him.

---

That evening, he sat across from Balin in the bar just down the road from the campus, one that was just old-fashioned enough that it was frequented by the professors rather than the students (to the relief of both parties, Thorin was quite sure).

“I just don't know how to get through to them, Balin,” Thorin said, staring into his glass of wine like it held all the answers. “Trying to engage these students is like talking to a blank wall, I get absolutely nothing back.”

Balin's expression was very careful. “What was your class actually about today?”

“Just a basic introduction to the runic alphabet. Not a hard concept to grasp, even for first year undergrads.”

“And is that what you taught them?” Balin quirked a chiding eyebrow, but there was a small smile on his face.

Thorin’s glower was its own answer.

Balin sighed, the amusement fading from his expression. “Thorin, your passion for your side project is admirable, but”-

“Side project?” Thorin interjected, offended. He scowled furiously. “You, of all people, dismissing my research as…”

Balin was unmoved by his show of temper and continued onwards. “Thorin, the department is thinking of cutting classes next year.”

Thorin stopped talking abruptly. While he was the head of the dwarven history department, in truth he didn't keep up with the gossip network that linked up the wider humanities department - between all of his administration duties, his class and his own research, he had no time or interest to spare for it - but Balin very much did. If he'd heard something and thought it important enough to mention, it was almost certainly true.

“And you know, you know, if they cut classes, it'll be from us.”

“Of course,” Thorin agreed heavily. “Mahal knows they wouldn't cut one class of elven history, or even one of the five Gondorian history classes.”

“So you need to be careful,” Balin continued, his voice low and serious. “Your students need to keep coming to this class, and they need to pass their exams.”

Thorin nodded. He taught other classes of course, but dwarven runes were his passion, his entire life's work. To think that the class could be cut, that the knowledge of runes could fade to obscurity cut him deeply.

“I only want the students to find them as fascinating as I do,” Thorin sighed. It was true that he did sometimes get too wrapped up in what he was saying.

“I know, Thorin,” Balin assured him.

And Thorin admitted, if only to himself, that some of his theories were a little unorthodox. And that he occasionally went off on a tangent when lecturing. But unorthodox wasn't the same as wrong, and a tangent wasn't the same as boring.

“The runes were magic though,” he insisted, and Balin's face arranged itself into something very patient. “You've read the Song of Durin”-

“Yes, yes, with golden roof and silver floor/and runes of power upon the door,” Balin quoted. For all that his area of study was Third Age battles, Balin had always enjoyed the classics. “Thorin, the primary purpose of epic poetry was to entertain, not to give an accurate depiction of everyday life.”

“That doesn't make it useless as a historical source,” Thorin argued.

“Of course not,” Balin agreed calmly. “But not, I think, the way you are using it.”

Thorin looked away, stung. They had debated this point before, often, but it had always been a friendly discussion until now. This time, the argument tasted sour between them.

After a moment, Balin reached out and patted his hand in something like an apology. “Thorin, either publish a peer reviewed account of your theories and silence your critics and students alike, or stick to the curriculum and get your students through their exams. It's up to you, but you know which one I think you should focus on.”

---

That evening, Thorin returned to his flat, his head churning more from the conversation with Balin than from the wine.

His theories on the use of runes to create magic were not unique, but they tended to be dismissed as “popular history” at best or “complete nonsense” at worse.

Or, there was a more acceptable theory that the ancient dwarves thought that the runes had a magical effect, but that effect was in truth nothing more than a superstition.

Thorin believed otherwise, and always had, in large part due to his father.

Thorin had learned how to write his name in runes before he could speak it aloud. His father had been, at one point, acknowledged as the foremost expert on the Angerthas writing system in Middle-Earth. All of Thorin’s memories of his father were intertwined with runes one way or another, but Thorin’s love and passion for runes, and the role they played in dwarven history was entirely his own.

Thorin knew, of course, that the runic system of writing had originally been made by elves, but the dwarves had adapted them into a way of writing in their own language, Khuzdul, a system that outlasted any elven use of runes.

But dwarves had invented an entirely unique use for runes, letters inscribed in delicate mythril, invisible to all unless they were in the light of the moon they were written under. He still remembered seeing moon-runes for the first time on a map in a museum, one that his father had special permission to handle, watching the letters slowly shimmer into life before him.

How was that any less realistic than theorising that runes were magical? When every ancient dwarven tale mentioned runes of power? When elven magic was an accepted part of history with no greater evidence than old stories, now that so few elves remained in Middle-Earth and those that did had no more magical ability than any dwarf?

His father had believed so strongly in the magical potential of runes that he’d written his own book about it, though that book had been dismissed as a fabrication by most of the academic community due to the fact that his argument relied on an interpretation of several key runes that had never been seen before, that had no source or explanation other than what was in the book.

Thrain Durin's reputation had never recovered, and he had never published anything else again.

But Thorin knew his father, knew how careful he was in his research, and he believed that his theory had merit, so much so that he'd staked his own academic reputation on it.

Of course, Thorin had tried to test his theory, his father’s theory, several times with no success. But sometimes, when he inscribed a particular rune, one he suspected had a ritual purpose, such as the words for "light" or "safety" he felt something strange, a sort of tug at his awareness that faded away all too quickly for him to grasp but left him equally as sure that magic was possible, if he somehow got the right combination of runes on paper.

It was an endless academic quest those of his family and colleagues tolerated to one degree or another, so long as he kept it out of his classroom.

He still didn't think he was wrong to share his theories with his students, but he didn’t want his class on dwarven runes to be cut either. Crafting them was a lost art, Khuzdel relegated from the birthright of every dwarf to an academic language known by only a few. Thorin didn't want to see either die out, not in his lifetime.

So much of dwarven history was lost. They couldn’t afford to lose their language too. If that meant he had to forget about his own research for the time being, so be it. Some things were too important to risk.

His resolve lasted until he checked his emails.

Gandalf Greyhame was Thorin’s old professor and thesis advisor, one of the (very few) non-dwarven experts on dwarven history. He'd always been encouraging of Thorin's research in the past, although he had encouraged him to write his thesis on a slightly more defendable topic than dwarven magic.

The email was typically brief, just a thought this might interest you subject line, and a link to an article about an archaeological site.

Thorin clicked on the link and his eyes widened. The crew had half unearthed a stone - no, a door - filled with carved runes, too closely packed together for Thorin to read them all in the photograph, but he knew what they were. Runes of blessing, of protection, of warding.

“Runes of power upon the door,” he murmured to himself, his heart pounding hard in his chest, because one of those runes, a rune with no other known provenance, had been in his father's book.

Thorin knew it like his own name.

He squinted closer at the picture. Two excited, mud-splattered dwarves were posing either side of the door, and in the shadows behind them, another figure lingered, perhaps camera shy.

He scanned the article, looking for a name for someone on the site to contact, unable to stop himself from smiling.

He clicked on the picture, enlarging it, pushing the three, no two, dwarves out of sight on his screen (there had been nothing in the shadows of the picture after all, just the light on his screen catching slightly oddly) and started copying some of the runes down, his hand trembling in excitement.

This was it. He knew it deep down. If he didn't take this chance, he would never be able to prove both him and his father right.

---

Thorin spent his days doing what Balin had asked. Teaching runes like they were a dead language, devoid of all cultural and historical context.

It hurt him to do it, it burned him up that his students were only getting the smallest glimpse of what runes used to mean for their people, but his students were doing well on their assignments and that was apparently all the university cared about.

But in his own time he was drowning in translations and couldn't be happier.

He'd contacted the archaeologist in charge of the site - a cheerful dwarf named Bofur - who had been more than happy to send him photos of inscriptions they'd found on the site.

“I'd been thinking about contacting you myself,” Bofur had written in first email. “Course old Gandalf got there first!”

He was glad that Bofur was as enthusiastic about the sheer variety of runes as he was, because the inscriptions in the photographs were fascinating.

The first thing Thorin noticed was that the runes on the site were slightly different from the ones he was used to. Still perfectly legible, perfectly understandable, just shaped a little differently.

Thorin was beginning to suspect that this was evidence of a completely different dialect, though he would need far more evidence before he could prove it.

The second was how complex the runes in the photos were, and also how commonplace. There were everything from ornate blessings on carved pillars to what looked like simple signs for market stalls, the runes he was familiar with in an academic sense transformed into something mundane and wonderful because of it. 

“Look,” Thorin said to his sister Dis one evening over dinner. “You see these runes on the doors? They simply mean “open” or “shut.” It's so simple, and so common, it's on almost every door they've found so far.”

“A sign?” Dis asked, peering over at the picture on his phone screen, “or a warning perhaps? Something meant to deter thieves?”

“It could be any of them,” Thorin said, but he had his own theory. The runes themselves were the locking mechanism for the doors - he'd made careful enquiries but Bofur’s people had made no discoveries of any physical locks.

The runes locked the doors. A simple, everyday magic, one available even to the simple houses of the common folks, not even in the depths of the mountain, one that now seemed so unrealistic that it could be a fairytale.

He knew it deep down, the truth of it burned within him like a fire, but he didn’t say it to Dis. Unlike him, she’d never believed in their father’s research, but nor did she believe that he had intended to misrepresent the evidence about his theory.

She simply believed that he had been wrong and was too stubborn to retract his theory. The two of them had argued about it over and over again - stubbornness was a family trait they shared - and Thorin had no wish to be at odds with his sister, not when he would be going away for a while.

“Bofur has invited me down to the site during the holiday…” he began, and Dis immediately nodded.

“You should go, of course. It'll be good for you to get out of the office for a while. Sometimes I don't think you enjoy your job as much as you used to.”

“I enjoy it,” Thorin protested. “Most of the time.” He bought his phone back, his thumb caressing a rune on the screen, one he couldn't figure out but was fairly sure was a personal name. “But this is… like finding a lost treasure buried in the ground.”

“Go, enjoy yourself,” Dis said with a little laugh. “And if you want to take the boys with you, please feel free!”

---

It was a long drive from Eriador to Rhovanion, especially with his nephews playing car games for the majority of the journey, but it was worth it to see the mountain growing ever closer.

It would have been a majestic sight, once. It was still impressive after whatever had caused the front face of the mountain to crumble and fall. Even under the rubble there were signs of dwarven handiwork on the mountain; as they drove through Eagaroth and up towards the excavation site, the road they were following was clearly of dwarven make, as sturdy as the day it was first built.

When they parked the car and got out, Bofur came hurrying over to them, smiling widely.

“Welcome to the Lonely Mountain!” he declared, shaking all their hands energetically.

“The Lonely Mountain?” Kili asked curiously.

“Aye, well, that’s what the Men of these parts call it, what the dwarves called it is no longer known. But that’s part of what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?”

Fili nodded eagerly. An archaeology student himself, he was keen to do some fieldwork for his course. Kili nodded just as enthusiastically, although he had yet to fully decide his academic path.

“How much do you know about the mountain?” Bofur asked.

“Founded in the Second Age,” Thorin answered. He knew the broad strokes of the mountain’s history even before he had started doing his translations. “Inhabited at different points throughout the Third Age before being abandoned for good in the Fourth. Rich and powerful once, but much of its history has been lost in the last age.” As he spoke, he felt the sadness he always did at the loss of so much history. It fueled his determination to get into the city, discover once and for all what happened here.

Bofur nodded, spreading his arms wide. “This was a marketplace once,” he said, indicating the field that was empty aside from many dug trenches, with busy archaeologists carefully scraping through the dug soil with trowels. “As big as some towns, I’d say, and rich too with the kind of artefacts we’ve found! There were also some houses built on the outside of the mountain, we think for guards and non-dwarven visitors. You lads can head to the trenches tomorrow, see what you can find. Thorin, I’ll show you to the door tomorrow, it’s getting a bit dark now.”

The boys chatted on, asking about the found artefacts, while Thorin’s attention drifted. It almost felt like someone was calling to him, but too quiet for him to make out any words. He didn’t know when he’d started noticing it, but it felt like he had been hearing it for a long time.

He shook his head as Bofur addressed them again, snapping back into focus. “We’ve got some cabins here for communal use, but you’ll either have to find rooms back in Lake-Town or pitch up a tent with the others."

“We’ve got tents,” Kili assured him. “And we made Uncle practice putting his up before we came!”

Thorin scruffed his hair in retaliation and followed Bofur to the campsite, trying to stop thinking about the runes on the door.

He’d waited this long. He could wait another night.

---

The first night on site, Thorin had a dream.

In his dream, the city was restored to its past glory, but it was off somehow, like it had been constructed by someone who had heard about cities theoretically but had never seen one.

The buildings weren't level, the streets looped and double-backed on themselves to make never-ending paths, and the dwarves who lived there either stared straight ahead, or babbled some noise that sounded like a conversation from far away but was revealed to be gibberish when close enough to hear better.

Nevertheless, Thorin walked through the city, unconcerned. He had a companion, a guide, an indistinct figure that his eyes skipped over or twisted away from.

“All this can be again, if you can only find the right words,” the figure said, his voice an echoing cacophony.

“I know,” Thorin answered. And he did.

The words lived Inside him, as vivid and warm as blood.

When he woke, he forgot the words, the dream, in his eagerness to begin his work.

---

The next morning, Thorin sat at the breakfast table with the members of Bofur’s crew, trying to hide his impatience. His nephews had settled in well, chatting to the other archaeologists, but Thorin sat tapping his fingers against his coffee cup, silent until Bofur came and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Ready to get to work, I take it!” Bofur said with an easy laugh, beckoning him to follow. “We’re excavating the rockfall over the door a little more each day, there’s already so much more for you to see!” He nodded and called a few words to the crew who shouted out greetings and questions, but as they left the cabin, Bofur’s expression turned oddly serious.

“I don’t want to put too much on you, Thorin,” he said. “Honestly, I’m thrilled you’re here, I think I've read pretty much all your books! But I have to confess, I was hoping you’d stay on as more than just a guest on the site. This door - you know what we think, that there’s a lost dwarven kingdom behind it, perhaps completely intact - but if we can’t open the door, we’ll never get in, short of using explosives, of course.”

Thorin turned to him, the protest against damaging the door dying on his lips when he saw Bofur’s expression, not serious, but frustrated.

“This could be the discovery of our lifetime! You know how much of our history we’ve lost over the years, how hard we have to fight to preserve it. We just need to get in.”

“And that’s where I come in,” Thorin realised, taking a deep breath, his adrenaline spiking.

“And that’s where you come in,” Bofur agreed. “Dwarf doors don’t give up their secrets easily. Even once the whole door is uncovered, we have no idea how to open it. But once the door is free from all the rubble, and you can read it ....”

“It might not be as easy as that,” Thorin cautioned, “while what I can read on the door does seem to indicate some sort of” - he bit off his words before he could say spell, and continued - “instruction to open it, even if I can translate it, there might be more to it than is immediately obvious. The ancient dwarves hid riddles in their runes, especially on dwarf doors.”

Bofur nodded, unphased by Thorin’s warning. “We’re not in a hurry. We’ve got all summer, and even when you go back to your uni in the autumn, you have an open invitation to the site. The kingdom’s been waiting for centuries, it'll let us in when it’s ready.”

Thorin opened his mouth to reply, when he looked up, and all his words were lost to him

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Bofur said quietly, next to him.

Emerging out of the fallen stone at the base of the mountain were several enormous, ornate carvings, beautiful, abstract designs. Between the carvings lay the doors themselves, though if Thorin hadn’t been familiar with the doors from the photographs and with dwarven doors generally, it would have been hard to identify it as a door. There was no visible opening for the doors, no hinges or handles or locks, just runes. Shimmering faintly as the sun caught them, half covered by the rubble, they set Thorin’s heart racing.

The rune for open that he’d seen before. His father’s rune, the one that no one else had ever been able to translate, there in front of him. It was everything he’d ever hoped for and more than he had ever expected.

Next to him, Bofur laughed softly. “Yeah, we’ve got the right dwarf for the job.” He handed Thorin a hard hat from the equipment. “Try and keep out of the construction crew’s way while you work, yeah? I’ll see you tonight, let me know what you have come up with later.”

Thorin absently adjusted his hard hat, pulled his notebook out of his pocket and got to work.

---

Day by day, the door slowly emerged from the rubble and Thorin’s notebook was filled with scrawled runes and more careful diagrams.

It wasn’t easy as a word for word translation. The runes had layered meanings, often concealed within metaphors and riddles. Thorin was often going back and self-correcting, his initial interpretation turning out to be wrong.

He was in his element. He didn’t want to go back to work when term began, he barely wanted to go back to his tent at night.

The runes on the door called to him, and all he wanted to do was listen.

He put his notebook away every evening to talk to Fili and Kili, both of them enthused about the finds that they’d discovered in the market place site. He was pleased to see their love of dwarven history grow in front of him, and pleased to see how well they worked with Bofur’s crew, but other than that, his eyes were on his notebook, his mind on the door.

He did sleep, of course, but the thought of opening the door burned in him like a fever and left him restless in the night.

He dreamed of the door, and the city beyond, and always a figure walking next to him, one his eyes couldn’t quite see.

“Who are you?” he asked one night, as he ran his hands over the door in his dream. In his dream there was no rubble, the door looked freshly carved, and the runes were shining bright as moonlight. They pulsed under his hands like a drumming heartbeat, warm like a living thing. It seemed a reasonable question to ask this figure he’d seen so often, though he tended to forget these strange dreams when he was awake, only remembering the next night when he slept again.

“Me? I’m harmless,” the figure answered with a little self-deprecating laugh, which was definitely not an answer. But before he could push it, the figure added, “besides, this is your dream. I’m just a figment your mind has conjured up to work through the problem of the door.”

“That makes sense,” Thorin replied, already caught up again in the runes. “This is just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” the figure agreed. “Now listen closely. You’ve got these two runes switched around.”

Thorin listened closely, the dream forgotten on waking, but the meanings of the runes he’d copied the day before gleaming like gold in his mind.

---

Summer wore on, and the nights were starting to get shorter again and the construction crew still hadn’t removed enough rubble to reveal the entire door to the mountain. One side was still obscured by debris, though the other was at least fully clear. 

And Thorin still had no idea how to open the door. He’d been trying as soon as the crew said that he could, that enough of the rubble was cleared that the door might open anyway, starting by laying his hand on the door, and simply saying the word for “open.”

He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, and it wasn’t.

He tried the names of the Kings of Old, the ones carved on the door, to no avail. He invoked the old protections written on the door, tried ordering it, tried asking nicely, tried a few ancient curses when nothing else worked.

Bofur didn’t seem too worried about his failure. “Maybe there’s another part of the puzzle still hidden by the debris. We’re in this for the long haul, don’t worry. The city is not going anywhere.”

But Thorin knew how close they were. The delay was like an itch deep under his skin that he couldn’t scratch, and his sleep that night was even more restless.

“Haven’t you worked it out yet?” the figure asked that night, reflecting his own frustration back at him, and Thorin scowled in his dream. “I’m trying my best to be patient, but there’s only so much longer I can wait for you.”

“If you’re not going to help, then just be quiet,” he snapped at the figure, who only sighed in response.

“You’re getting too hung up on a door you are never going to get open,” the figure said, in the overly patient tone of someone explaining something extremely obvious to a child, and Thorin whirled around, furious.

“I said be quiet! I didn’t ask for your help! Why are you even here?”

The figure let out a long sigh. “It’s nothing to do with you, Thorin. Your translations are correct, remarkably so, in fact. When this kingdom was abandoned, long ago, they sealed the doors with a powerful runic spell from the other side. Even if all the landslide is cleared away, even if you speak the words of opening perfectly - and like I said, your work is good, you’d definitely figure it out before too long - the door is not going to open. Unless you let your friends blast their way through like they suggested, you’re never going to get in that way.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Thorin demanded.

“I was there,” the figure answered simply.

Thorin sank down to his knees, pressing his forehead against the door. It didn’t even occur to him to question that statement, simply accepting it as part of the dream. “So this has all been for nothing.”

The figure laughed brightly. “Not at all! There’s always another way!” It took Thorin’s arm.

Suddenly, they were on the other side of the mountain, and Thorin stared up at a massive staircase, cunningly disguised as part of the rockface.

“This isn't on Bofur’s plans,” Thorin commented, surprised.

“It was hidden even in the kingdom’s heyday,” the figure replied. “Even the mightiest fortress needs an escape route.”

They walked up the ancient stone steps. It should have taken hours but they were at the top in less than a heartbeat.

“Can you work out what’s here?” the figure asked, voice teasing, and Thorin stepped forward, eyes wide.

“A hidden door?” he murmured. “But how to find it…?”

“It had a key, once, but it was lost along with everything else, when things went bad,” the figure said. “But if you know the right words, you won’t need a key.”

The figure didn’t give him a chance to examine the wall. In a blink, they were through it and on the other side.

“How did you… this doesn’t look like an abandoned place,” Thorin said quietly, looking around the bright and bustling kingdom.

“It wasn’t always abandoned,” the figure agreed. “And it won’t always be. But you need to stop focusing so much on the door, and think about what’s behind it.”

“There’s no point thinking about that until we can get through it,” Thorin disagreed, but followed the figure as it walked through the city, passing the dwarves who lived there like they were ghosts.

“You want to know the truth of what runes can do, yes?” the figure asked, and led him into a library. “Everything you need is in here, everything that proves you and your father right. All you have to do is open the hidden door, and this library is yours. You’ll be the first dwarf in hundreds of years to have the power of magic at your fingertips.” He tapped a book on the shelf pointedly, drawing Thorin’s attention to it.

“I don’t want power,” Thorin told the figure. “I just want to know.”

“They say knowledge is power,” the figure countered, sounding amused. “But if that is what you want, then you’ll have it. You just have to open the door.”

“You keep saying that but I don't know how!” Thorin exclaimed in frustration.

“Don’t you?” the figure asked, and touched his forehead.

Thorin woke with a jolt, and knew for a fact that he could get into the mountain.

---

“How did you know this was here?” Bofur exclaimed, looking at the staircase cut into the rock. “We surveyed this whole mountain! Twice!”

“I just… saw it,” Thorin explained. “I must have just turned my head at the right angle to see it.”

“It’s remarkable,” Bofur breathed. “The skill this must have taken…”

“It’s a staircase,” Thorin reasoned aloud. “So, what’s at the top of it?”

Bofur met his gaze, and they both stared upwards. Bofur smiled. “Let’s find out.”

If he’d been alone, Thorin would have simply climbed to the top, but Bofur insisted on having his people check it over first.

“I know I made you sign a health and safety waver when you joined us, but let’s not put it to the test,” he said. “Whatever is up there is not worth you breaking your neck over it.”

Thorin waited impatiently, drumming his fingers against his thigh in agitation until after hours of waiting, he finally was given permission to climb.

It was steep, but easy and steady to climb, somehow almost like he had done it before, but it was still almost dark before they reached the top.

“There’s nothing here,” Bofur panted as they reached the summit. “Who’d go through building all this for no reason? We should have left it until tomorrow - we’re going to have to climb back in the dark now.”

Thorin wasn’t listening. He stepped forward, almost in a trance, and ran his hands over the wall in a gesture as easy as if he had done it a thousand times before.

“The last light,” he murmured to himself, not knowing or caring how he knew, just that he did. “It’s the moonlight.”

Bofur gasped as runes shimmered across the wall, an outline of a door suddenly appearing, along with a keyhole that looked like it had been deliberately damaged.

“How did you…” Bofur shook his head. “There’s a keyhole but no key.” His voice was a strange mixture of thrilled and disappointed.

“The runes are the key,” Thorin said, mostly to himself. “The door’s been altered from its original design.”

“How could you possibly know that? What exactly do the runes say, Thorin? I can’t make heads nor tails of them.”

He lay his hand on the keyhole and spoke the words. The door opened inwards.

Thorin moved his hand from the door, the words of power burning on lips.

The door had been sealed, he knew, when the kingdom had been abandoned, centuries before. The sealing spell had been right in front the whole time, hidden in a poem scrawled at the bottom of the main door in runes so small they were basically invisible.

The King Under the Mountain will come into his own.

Bofur exclaimed behind him in glee, and the workers cheered behind him, but Thorin was already walking, like he was in a dream.

“I know these walls,” he whispered. “I’ve been here before.”

His nephews cried out in alarm, but he kept going. It was dark, but it was no obstacle. He knew where he was going.

He walked the streets, eyes straight ahead. In his mind’s eye, the city was not ruined and empty, but bright and full of life, and he knew it, he knew it.

When he reached the library (and how had he known it was there? How had he known the door was sealed? Why wasn’t he panicking? Why was he still moving?) his eyes went straight to a book, inscribed with silver runes that screamed a warning he was unable to heed.

He reached out, and opened it, and his mind shattered.

He saw a thousand years, compressed into a heartbeat. He felt unfathomable grief and unending loneliness and a hunger that had no cessation. There was darkness that lasted forever, and a burst of light behind his eyes that blinded him for a moment that was sharp and terrible.

When he could see again, when he was himself again, he was lying on the floor, clutching his head, his eyes wet, and there was a halfling leaning over him.

Chapter Text

Thorin rolled away from the halfling, his whole body screaming out a warning, though he didn’t know why. He looked friendly enough, though his face was scrunched up in concern.

“Who are you?” Thorin demanded through his painfully dry throat.

“Did you bang your head?” the halfling asked. “We’ve worked together all summer! I’m not that forgettable, am I?”

The memories slowly came back to him then. Of course, it was just Bilbo. Bilbo Baggins, a halfling professor of ancient history who had also volunteered on the site. He’d helped him with his translations, and they’d spent hours in the evening chatting about everything or nothing. He really must have banged his head, not to remember him.

Except for… no, that wasn’t right. No one had helped him, he’d spent his evenings alone or with his nephews. He didn’t know this Baggins, whoever he was, except for the fact he did.

He’d listened to him every night in his dreams. He remembered now. In the darkness of the ancient library, his face was shadowed, and Thorin found it hard to even look at him, like his eyes wanted to just skip over him. It was a familiar feeling.

“You,” he said, stepping forwards. His foot stepped on the book, and he bent and picked it up. It looked blank now, no longer glowing, but if nothing else it was heavy despite being small. “What are you?”

“You really do have the most remarkable mind,” the figure, Baggins, said. “It’s been a pleasure sharing your dreams.”

Thorin stepped forward, book raised as if he were about to swat a fly, when racing footsteps came towards them.

“Mr Baggins!” Fili exclaimed, running towards them both. “You found him!”

“I did,” he answered with a pleasant smile. “He’s just a bit overcome, I think.”

“Get out of his head,” Thorin snapped, standing between Fili and the thing wearing a halfling’s face.

“Uncle, what are you talking about?” Fili asked, tugging on his arm, his face grave.

“I think he might have bumped his head a little,” Baggins said. “He didn’t recognise me at first, but nothing a bit of rest won’t fix.”

“We should get back to Bofur anyway,” Fili said. “He’s been muttering something about health and safety the whole time you’ve been gone. He’s going to flip when he realises you need the first aider.”

“I don’t,” Thorin replied, still standing protectively in front of his nephew. “I just need answers.”

“We’ll get them,” Fili replied easily. “This is the archaeological find of the decade! We’re all going to be famous, but not if Bofur kills us all first for running off!”

“We’re right behind you,” Baggins replied easily. “There’s plenty of time for answers later.”

---

It was too late and too dark to walk back down the steps to the camp, so the dwarves who’d followed them up the steps made a temporary camp in the hallway just beyond the hidden door.

No one was even pretending to rest, however. The crew was wandering around wide-eyed, taking pictures, sketching the carvings on the walls, beginning to map out the rooms. The air of excitement was palpable - Bofur was too preoccupied with the discovery to do more than jokingly chide Thorin for running off, and to check he was alright. He’d pulled off his ever- present hat and was wringing it between his hands, slack-jawed in amazement. He didn’t even seem to notice the book from the library that Thorin still clutched in his hands.

“You really did it,” he said, his voice shaking with suppressed excitement. “Someday soon, you’re going to have to tell me exactly what those runes said.”

Thorin only nodded, a sick feeling churning in his stomach. Baggins was milling around with the dwarves and none of them were acting like there was anything strange about it. They were all acting like they knew him. Like he’d been there all along.

His head throbbed with a remembered echo of what he’d felt in the library, and he staggered outside the hidden door to sit heavily on the top step, looking down at the lights from the distant camp. The moon was bright above but where earlier it had filled him with a feverish hope, it simply made him feel cold and small and alone.

The book he’d taken from the library was in his lap, runes on the cover reflecting in the moonlight, and he had no desire to even look at them.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting on the front step before the thing that called itself Baggins sat next to him on the step, contentedly drinking tea from a thermos he’d acquired from somewhere.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had a good cup of tea, I don't even mind that it’s made with that dreadful long-life milk,” he said, stretching his bare feet out in front of them comfortably.

“What are you?” Thorin asked bluntly, putting the book in his jacket pocket.

Baggins laughed. “Oh, that's a very long story.”

“You're not a halfling,” he persisted.

“Not normally,” Baggins agreed. “But I told you I was harmless, and this is apparently what harmlessness looks like to you! Interesting choice, I quite like it.”

“And are you? Harmless?”

“Yes,” Baggins said immediately. “To you, anyway, and everyone here, at least.”

“That's not a comforting answer,” Thorin sighed.

“Few answers are,” Baggins agreed calmly, taking another sip of his drink.

“What's your real name?” Thorin continued.

“That's an even longer story,” Baggins said dismissively. “My friends call me Bilbo, though.”

“Your friends?” Thorin asked. “Are there more of whatever you are?”

Baggins made a little humming sound that could have been a yes or no. “I meant you, Thorin.”

“We're not friends,” Thorin objected. He forced himself not to edge away.

“We could be,” Baggins said earnestly. “I owe you a great deal. I'd like to be friends.”

“You can start by telling me your real name, if you want to be friends.” Thorin crossed his arms and glared at him. In the moonlight, the patterns on his yellow waistcoat seemed to crawl and change, and Thorin was forced to look away.

Baggins was quiet for a long moment. “Real names are tricky things,” he said at last. “You'll need to understand that if you want to persist with learning rune magic. Names are truth. Runes are truth captured in stone, and that's what gives the runes power. To inscribe a rune is to know something or someone's true name, and that gives you power over them.”

Thorin listened closely, his brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I've never read any concept like that in any book,” he said at last.

“Because it was understood as a basic fact of life,” Baggins said. He raised his cup. “If I asked you for a cup of tea, you'd know what I meant without me explaining what a cup was or what to put in it. It's a concept that underpinned the whole of society, back then, at least.”

Thorin nodded again, turning that concept over in his mind. It was the missing piece of his research, the how of runes being magic. Normally it would occupy his mind to the extent of everything else, but now… “As interesting as that is, don't think I didn't notice how you didn't answer the question.”

Baggins laughed in genuine delight. “You really do have a remarkable mind. Alright, I'm not telling you my true name, but I've been known by others in my time. He That Walks Unseen, that was a good one. Or Mister Lucky Number, I was always partial to that one. The Stinging Fly, The Web Cutter, He That Buries His Friends Alive And Drowns Them And Draws Them Alive Again From The Water.” He paused, then smiled at Thorin. “Admittedly that last one is a bit of a mouthful. You can see why I prefer Bilbo.”

“They sound like titles,” Thorin pointed out. “Not names.” He tried not to think too hard about the implications of the last one.

“What do you think a name is, Thorin?” Baggins asked, putting his cup down and leaning back on his elbows.

Thorin filed that away for future consideration. “I still don't know what you are,” he said. “Or how you spoke to me in my dreams. Or how you were here, in a book.” Baggins opened his mouth. “And don't tell me it's a long story. You can give me the synopsis, at least.”

“I suppose that's fair,” he conceded. He drummed his fingers on his leg, apparently deep in thought. “Where to begin? Well, I am from very far away, further than you could possibly imagine or comprehend. Not an insult,” he added quickly. “Just a simple fact. And as such, little things like time, space and reality don't have the same restrictions on me as they do you. There’s no difference for me between a dreaming and waking state. With me so far?”

“I suppose,” Thorin said, slowly, trying to twist that statement into something he understood. His head was aching. “But why were you here in the first place? In Middle-Earth, I mean?”

“I like stories,” Baggins said simply. “Writing them, telling them, collecting them. From as many different places as I can think of to go. But you can't collect stories without appearing in a few.”

He sighed. For the first time his easy smile faded and he looked impossibly ancient, like a weathered statue from a forgotten age. “Many years ago, this kingdom faced a terrible danger.”

“What danger? When? Third or Fourth Age?” Thorin interjected. “We know the site was abandoned but no one can agree on when it was…”

“I don’t remember,” Baggins said with a little shrug. “I’ve seen a lot of kingdoms fall and time means something different to me than it does to you. War? Natural Disaster? Betrayal? In the end it's all the same. I'm sure the team here will figure it out in time. But the people here were desperate, desperate enough to try something they’d read in an old tale. They summoned me here, and commanded me to save their kingdom.” His mouth twisted. “There are rules. They ignored them. They were unwilling to pay the cost of what they asked. They didn't have my true name, so they couldn't compel me, but they had enough to seal me away in that book where I had nothing but dreams to wander in. For I don’t know how long, I sought out someone to free me.”

“And you found me,” Thorin said, feeling a cold creep through him. What had he unleashed on the world?

“I did.” Baggins said. His smile was back. “And I am more grateful than I can say.”

“And what now?” Thorin demanded. “Do you want revenge on my people for sealing you away?”

Baggins heaved out a huge sigh. “The people who sealed me away are long dead and their names are forgotten. That's revenge enough. No, for the first time in a very long time, I think I want to go home.”

It was such a simple thing to want. Thorin was caught between sympathy and disbelief.

“I have a library,” Baggins continued, more to himself. “I haven't seen it for so long.”

“Well, what's stopping you?” Thorin said, trying not to sound like he was too desperate for Baggins to leave.

“There are rules, like I said,” Baggins said, standing up and brushing his trousers free of dust. “You set me free, I need to repay you. I said I would teach you the secret of runes, and I will.”

Thorin opened his mouth to say it wasn't necessary, he could figure it out himself, when Baggins continued, voice casual, “oh, by the way, I don't suppose you saw what happened to the little book I was trapped in?”

Thorin froze, the weight of it in his pocket suddenly overwhelming. “No,” he said. “I was a bit overcome at the time.”

Baggins’ eyes glittered like distant stars as he looked down at Thorin. “Well, if you see it, please do let me know.”

Thorin nodded, but Baggins was already gone, like he'd never been there.

He stayed outside for a long time that evening, trying to come to terms with everything he’d heard, and to shake the lingering ancient loneliness out of his mind.

---

The next morning, Thorin made his way down the steps, bundled his protesting nephews into the car, muttering reassurances to a bewildered Bofur that they’d be back soon, and drove away from the site as fast as he could legally go.

“Uncle, what’s the matter?” Kili protested. “We can’t leave yet, not after yesterday! This is the biggest archaeological discovery of the entire Fifth Age, I don’t want to miss anything!”

“Are you feeling alright?” Fili added, looking closely at his face. Thorin didn’t want to know just how bad he looked. “You’ve not been yourself since yesterday.”

“I’m fine,” he muttered. “There’s just something I need to do. And you should catch your mother up with what’s happening. I’ll pick you both back up in the morning.”

In truth, he had not wanted to leave his nephews alone with Baggins, not when he wasn’t there to keep an eye on what was happening. Baggins had called himself harmless, but who knew what his definition of harm was? He’d already meddled with their memories.

Thorin had spent the whole night trying to figure out what to do about Baggins, without much success, but he realised that he had two opportunities to try and find out more about what exactly Baggins was, and how much danger he actually posed.

Firstly, Baggins had told him names - titles - that he’d been called in the past and that he’d been mentioned in stories. That meant that he could probably find some mention of him written down somewhere.

And Thorin still had the book from the ancient library, the one that Baggins wanted back. That must mean that there was something in the book that Baggins didn’t want him to see, something he could learn, but he couldn’t do it on the site, not with Baggins there.

He arrived at the campus, mostly empty as term hadn’t yet started, and parked outside the library. The dwarven department was on the ground floor, and was definitely the least maintained of the entire library, but that was an old grievance that Thorin barely considered as he walked through the shelves.

Unlike the rest of the library that had motion-activated lights, this floor had old-fashioned light pulls on every row of shelves, and until they were used, the library was in darkness, aside from the dim emergency lights.

Thorin walked past the language section that he was most familiar with, and headed over to the folklore section, pulling the lightswitch as he studied the shelves. The light above him flickered inconsistently and he shook his head, dismissing the brief annoyance.

He gathered a pile of books in his arms, pulling at first at random, then more focused as he started recognising authors and titles and spread them out on the floor, flipping through them feverishly, scanning for mentions of anything that could potentially be Baggins.

Several hours later, he sat back, his notebook was filled with scribbled notes and he sat back, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He hadn’t learned much, but he’d found some reference to The Web Cutter and Mister Lucky Number.

Both seemed to be trickster type figures, seemingly made from wits and magic, who helped the dwarves they were involved with as much as they hindered them, but neither figure didn’t seem to be actively malicious to the dwarves they encountered. But still, he wouldn’t call either figure benevolent either.

He couldn’t find any reference to anyone who drowned their friends alive either, which wasn’t entirely comforting.

He picked up the last book, old and musty, about late Third Age dwarven superstitions, and his eyes widened.

The book had been annotated, and he recognised his father’s handwriting. In the margins of the page that rather dryly compared different mythological figures he saw written over and over again: don’t trust the dreams don’t trust the dreams don’t trust don’t trust don’t don’t

In the middle of the scattered books, Thorin put his head in his hands, nausea sweeping over him. His father had known Baggins in his dreams, the way Thorin had. Baggins had tried to entice his father into freeing him, he’d shown Thrain enough about runes to destroy him, to fuel his obsession and ruin his reputation and leave him confused and frustrated and ashamed.

And the burden of that had passed down to Thorin, that obsession, and he’d released something that he couldn’t hope to understand because of it.

He felt cold fury sweep through him, and he pulled out the book from the ancient library. It was small, only slightly bigger than his palm, with a dark blue cover. The runes on the cover were silver - inscribed in mithril, if he wasn’t mistaken - and Thorin could read most of them, and could guess the rest from context. A warning of danger, a plea not to open the book, a command for whatever was within the pages to stay there.

It occurs to Thorin that if all else failed, if the thing he’d released proved a danger, perhaps he could find a way to seal Baggins away again.

All he’d need was his true name.

---

That night, Thorin slept in his own home for the first time in weeks. He’d spent the evening doing further research into the myths surrounding the names that Baggings gave him. A lot of the “research” couldn’t really be called that - it was mostly uncited legends and wild theories connecting disparate mythologies - but one thing that Thorin noticed was that all the legends he could connect him to were old. Some of the oldest in Middle Earth, not just in dwarven mythology but elven and human as well.

Just how long had Baggins been wandering Middle Earth unnoticed, infecting people with dreams? Surely his father could not have been the first, or Thorin the only one?

The other stories he found were (dubiously sourced) accounts of people who had tried to attract the attention of this being with rituals or blessings to ask for gifts or favours, only for the thing they'd asked for to twist against them in the end.

And Baggins had offered him a reward. What did that mean for him?

Thorin didn’t intend to fall asleep that night, but when he did - face down in a pile of books and printer paper - Baggins appeared in his dreams, a quizzical expression on his borrowed halfling features.

Like before, they walked through a city that was not quite right. Thorin could see the distinctive outline of the mountain and the dwarven architecture that had become familiar to him, but they were intercut with strange rounded edges that led nowhere, and the sky above them was a strange shade of green with roiling clouds that hurt his eyes to look at.

“You left,” Baggins said, tilting his head as he regarded Thorin. “I have to say that I didn’t expect that. I thought they’d have to pry you out of that library with a crowbar.” His voice was warm and familiar, like he knew Thorin, like they were old friends.

Thorin didn’t offer an explanation of why he’d left or what he’d been doing. “You spoke to my father in his dreams.” He said flatly. It wasn’t a question, he already knew.

“Yes?” Baggins replied slowly. “I was trapped. I called out to anyone who could hear me.”

“Your dreams ruined his life,” Thorin told him, stepping forwards, uncaring of how ancient and powerful Baggins might be or what he might do in response. He was fueled by his fury, and the memory of a scrawled note in an old text book in his father’s shaky handwriting. “He lost his reputation, his job and his peace. Everything he was and could have been was lost because of you!”

Thorin only became aware that he was shouting when Baggins actually stepped backwards, away from him. His shadow - far bigger than it should be - writhed and coiled in agitation where it painted deep shadows against the city wall.

“And you’re doing it again, to me, to my nephews, getting in our minds and twisting our memories. I won’t allow it, not to them.” Thorin clenched his fists and glowered at the creature in front of him.

“Thorin…” Baggins said slowly, hands held out placatingly, “I don’t mean you any harm. And I definitely don’t mean your nephews any harm. All I want is to go home.”

“Then go,” Thorin snapped. “And get out of my head! I want nothing more to do with you.”

Baggins’ eyes widened, a hurt look crossing his face, before he vanished, the city and alien sky fading away with him.

Thorin dreamed of nothing for the rest of the night, waking in the morning with an ache in his neck and an empty feeling in his heart, hollowed out by anger and regret.

---

He’d missed a lot of texts, he realised when he woke. Mostly from his nephews asking when he was coming for them, eager to go back to the site.

A few from Bofur, full of questions that Thorin didn’t know how to answer, also asking if he could come back to the site, no pressure, yeah but as soon as possible. A few from other members of the team asking the same thing.

Thorin wanted to go back to the dig as much as he wanted to never think about it again, but in the end it was the memory of the runes glimmering in the moonlight that decided for him. He wasn’t going to let Baggins steal his dream, his achievement, from him. He’d worked his whole life for this chance.

He dressed heavily, putting on a winter coat - he’d been feverishly compelled when he’d first entered the mountain but now that particular feeling had faded he recalled how cold it was - before setting out to pick Fili and Kili up from his sister's home.

His nephews clambered into the car the moment Thorin pulled up outside, not even giving him a chance to turn the engine off.

“I’m glad to see you’re both so enthusiastic,” Thorin said, and found himself meaning it. Beyond what happened with Baggins, beyond what it meant for his own research, this site was important for dwarven history as a whole. So much of their past was lost to them, due to how many times dwarven kingdoms had been scattered, and finding this city, a whole intact kingdom, would no doubt have scholars itching to explore. They were lucky to be among the first to see it.

When they arrived at the site, they were greeted by Bofur who looked massively relieved to see them. “The king has returned,” he said with a grin.

“What?” Thorin asked, baffled and Bofur let out an easy chuckle.

“Just a little joke we’ve been having since you left,” Bofur said. “You read the inscription, you opened the door. Must mean something, right?” He laughed again, shaking his head. “I’d still love to know how you did it.”

Behind him, his nephews snickered and Thorin rolled his eyes to the sky. He already knew he was never going to hear the end of that joke.

“Anyway,” Bofur said, pushing his hat nervously higher on his head. “We’ve got some press here today, some local news station wants to do a story. I was hoping you’d speak to them with me.” He pulled a face. “Don't really want to be on camera, but what can you do?”

“Of course,” Thorin said, but the optimism he’d felt that morning faded away as he spotted, milling around with a group of industrious archaeologists, Baggins watching him from the other side of the camp.

He sighed, and followed Bofur with a scowl, his mood darkening once more.

---

The interview went well - dwarven journalists who were as excited as they should be - and Thorin had already received a text from Balin letting him know that he'd seen them on the news.

I should have known better than to give you an ultimatum, Thorin! You'll be pleased to know that your class lists have suddenly filled up! Can't wait to hear all about it.

He was smiling when he entered his tent, only for that smile to fade. Baggins was sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag, and that sense of unearthly otherness that seemed to surround him was gone. He looked like Thorin had felt that morning; tired and out of sorts.

“I thought I said I wanted nothing more to do with you,” Thorin said, crossing his arms and staring grimly down at him.

“You did,” Baggins said, mouth turning even further down, “but before I go, I just wanted to apologise.”

This surprised Thorin enough that he let go of some of his anger. He didn’t reply, but tilted his head, indicating that Baggins could continue.

“I'm not mortal,” he said, and Thorin snorted. Baggins smiled slightly. “I'm sure you figured that out for yourself by now! But I forget sometimes, how brief and fragile your lives are. I was desperate to be free. Every moment I was in that book was agony - imagine being crushed in a landslide and all you can do to save yourself is shout and hope you're heard. That's what I was doing. I didn't think about what my call might do to the people who heard it. And for that, I'm sorry.”

“Sorry doesn't change what happened,” Thorin said, pushing away the unwilling sympathy. “Unless… could you? Change what happened?”

Baggins thought about it for a while. “Maybe,” he said, sounding unsure. “I could make it as if your father had never heard me, never wrote his book. But I can’t do that without changing you. And I'd rather not risk that.”

It was a surprising admission. Thorin sighed and sat across from him, knees almost touching in the small space. “And Fili and Kili? You’ve affected their memories too, and the memories of everyone here.”

“Technically, I meddled with reality so that they all already knew me, rather than with each individual mind, if that helps at all?”

Thorin laughed a little despite himself. “Not really.”

They were quiet for a long time after that. Thorin thought about what it would be like to be trapped for so long, recalling that brief moment of remembered agony he couldn't quite shake, but lasting for a thousand years.

What would he do, to be free? To go home? He didn't know. He didn’t think he could forgive Baggins for his father's suffering, but perhaps he could understand the reasons why he did what he had.

After all, he wasn't mortal. The thought still made him shiver.

“I still don't know what you are,” Thorin said, after a while of silence.

“I'm me,” Baggins said, his voice subdued. “I’m Bilbo. Just as you're Thorin. We can't be anything other than what we are.”

“What are you going to do now?” Thorin asked, curious despite himself.

“Go home,” he answered with a little shrug. “And put the kettle on, as it were.”

“Does your offer still stand? To teach me runic magic before you go?” The words were out of Thorin’s mouth before he could think them through, but he didn’t take them back.

His entire face brightened, like he was lit from within. “Yes, of course!” He rubbed his hands together in what seemed like genuine glee. “When do you want to start?”

“Bofur says we can go back to the library tomorrow,” Thorin replied, taken aback by his enthusiasm.

“Tomorrow it is! But why have you changed your mind?” His gaze was bright and sharp as he looked back at Thorin.

“You say you can't change what happened, but you can fix it.” Thorin sighed heavily. “You can help prove my father right, restore his reputation and make all those who ridiculed him apologise.”

“That's the least I can do,” he agreed, brightly. “I'll see you in the morning, Thorin.”

“Until then, Bilbo,” Thorin agreed, and he vanished, leaving an after-impression of his smile burned in Thorin's mind.

If Bilbo could do what he promised, he would count it as a debt paid. And if he couldn't, if he was lying, if he were a threat, Thorin still had the book, safely hidden back at his house.

The thought left him feeling slightly uncomfortable, after hearing of his pain, but he dismissed it. He didn’t entirely trust Bilbo, but he also didn't think he was lying.

It was a precaution, nothing more.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Thorin headed eagerly into the library, Bilbo at his heels. Bofur had given them strict instructions on how to handle any books they touched - clean, dry hands, unless the book was badly damaged - and how to record them. They were to take pictures before and after anything they touched and not remove anything permanently from its location.

Just recording the names of the books would be a lifetime of work. Thorin couldn’t wait to get started.

“Try and keep an eye out for anything that explains what actually happened here,” Bofur remarked as he led them in the library. “We want to know how they lived, of course, but what made them leave as well.”

“Census records?” Thorin suggested.

“Newspapers?” Bilbo added, and Bofur chuckled.

“You find an intact newspaper in here and I’ll eat my hat,” Bofur said, grinning.

Bilbo smiled back with an expression that suggested that there would be hat-eating in Bofur’s future, but didn’t otherwise reply.

Thorin shone his torch around the library, trying to take it in as his memory of it from his first visit was a little blurry. Other than the thick layer of dust, it was almost as if all the dwarves who’d worked there had simply gone home for the day - there were even still books open on the desks in front of them.

Some of the stone desks and benches had started to crumble, but most of the architecture had stayed firm. Thorin wasn’t sure exactly what condition the books would be in when they started searching, but they weren’t exposed to the elements, so as long as they’d not been affected by too many pests he was optimistic that they would be able to study them.

“Are you sure you can’t remember what happened here?” Thorin asked, and Bilbo shook his head, staring around him with a small frown.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “When the actual evacuation happened I wasn’t in any state to take it in.”

“We’ve found no bodies lying around, no sign of goblin invasion,” Thorin mused to himself, taking pictures of the dusty desks. “I can’t help but wonder where the dwarves who lived here went after they fled.”

Bilbo helped him take photos of the library for a while, and when they eventually stopped for a break, he said, “so, the runes?”

Thorin pulled out his notebook, and Bilbo laughed softly. “I should have known you’d be prepared. I told you that rune magic is the mastery of true names,” he said slowly, pouring himself some tea from the thermos he’d pulled from somewhere, “but that’s not all there is to it. You need to learn how to inscribe, evoke and command what you want the rune to do.”

Thorin nodded, making notes. “The dwarves of old had special tools to carve their runes,” Bilbo continued. “Unless you are making moon-runes or mythril runes, that’s not necessary. All you need is something to write with and your mind to make it real. Rip a page out of your notebook and write the rune for fire.”

Thorin did so. Nothing happened. Bilbo nodded. “Do it again, but picture a fire in your mind. Think of it burning as you write the rune, think about what fire means. Then say it out loud as you write it.”

Thorin tried, picturing flames in his mind, writing runes over and over again until his hand burned, until he felt like he was burning with it, and then he cried out “ursu!”

The page set alight, and Thorin snatched his hand away quickly. He looked over at Bilbo, a smile on his lips, and blinked. Through the small blaze and the brief smoke, Bilbo’s halfling form wavered. He looked bigger, so much bigger, though his eyes didn’t seem to want to take it in before the paper burned to nothing, and Bilbo was a hobbit again.

“You’re a natural,” Bilbo said, beaming with pride. “I knew you would be.”

The realisation that he’d used a rune for magic, that he’d be able to prove that his father’s theory had been correct all along made him tremble in suppressed excitement. He knew it. He’d always known it, and he was right.

“Show me something else,” Thorin demanded, and Bilbo laughed.

---

The last of summer melted away, and the return of autumn meant the return of Thorin’s teaching duties.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, with how much publicity the university was receiving from Thorin’s contributions on the dig, the history department were flexible with Thorin’s teaching duties, allowing him Fridays off so that he could return to the excavation every weekend.

He was still busy teaching, however. His classes had filled up beyond whatever he could have possibly expected, and there was demand for more classes in dwarven history from even non-dwarven students and most of his fellow professors were both overwhelmed and delighted by this development.

On his first day back on campus, before his first class even started, he opened his door to find Ori sitting outside, his colleague Dori’s youngest brother, and by far his best student.

“Please, sir, teach me magic,” he said, his eyes wild and wide. “I know you can. I always believed it.”

Thorin took a deep breath, surprised at how moved he was by this. He’d shown his runic magic off, of course, mostly to his nephews and sister (although the sight of it pained Dis, which pained him) and once to the press. But to hear it from someone who believed in him before he had proof of his theories was something else.

“Of course I will,” he assured him, and Ori beamed.

Thorin’s own magic lessons were continuing onwards, of course, both on site and off. Bilbo wasn’t restricted by location, he could simply appear wherever Thorin was, although he was scrupulous in never turning up unexpectedly. Thorin always received a text before he arrived, although Thorin didn’t like thinking too hard about that as he knew for a fact that Bilbo didn’t have a phone.

But Thorin had to admit, he had come to enjoy Bilbo’s company, beyond their conversations about runes and history. Bilbo was witty, observant, and a good conversationalist. The more time they spent together, the harder it was for Thorin to remember why he had been so wary. He’d even started to think of Bilbo as a friend, though he wasn’t entirely sure what friendship would mean to something like Bilbo.

One afternoon, as Thorin and Bilbo were alone in the ancient library, alternating between cataloguing a bookshelf that promised some interesting perspectives on the early settlement of the mountain and practising the kind of protection runes that were inscribed on the front door, Bilbo tilted his head curiously and called out to Bofur, who was in the corridor outside.

Bofur peered around the doorway, a small frown of confusion on his face. “Everything alright in here, lads?”

“Yes, of course,” Bilbo replied easily, closing the notebook Thorin had been practising in with a deliberate snap. “Just a little reminder about the crack in the centre of the fallen pillar you were about to excavate around - it’s likely to snap when the rubble that supports it is gone.”

Bofur blinked, a confused look in his eye until the strangeness of Bilbo’s statement seemed to fade away. “Course, I hadn't forgotten! Ta for the reminder, Bilbo.”

He ducked out of the room again, and Thorin could hear him calling out for more supporting scaffold to be placed around the pillar, and he turned back to Bilbo in confusion, sitting across from him on the worn stone table and bench they’d worked so hard to clear from dust and debris.

Bilbo opened the book again and started scanning the pages of Thorin’s meticulously written runes.

“How did you know that the pillar had a crack in it?” he asked slowly.

Bilbo gave him a very eloquent look. “Really, Thorin? You already know that I’m not limited to just the eyes you can see, how do you think I knew?”

“What would have happened if you hadn’t said anything?” Thorin asked slowly, his blood running cold. He could hear Fili and Kili's excited chatter in the hallway.

Bilbo shook his head. “It didn’t happen though, did it? No use worrying about spilt milk, as they say.”

“Why would you say anything?” Thorin frowned at him as if Bilbo was a book that he was trying to read, but his polite halfling expression gave nothing away. “What would it matter to you if that pillar fell? This entire city fell, and you watched.”

“May I remind you that when the city fell, I was trapped in a book and trying to not scream,” Bilbo replied snippily. He looked back down at his book and deliberately turned a page, only to let out an exaggerated sigh when Thorin didn’t turn his focus away. “Would it have upset you if the pillar fell, Thorin?”

“Obviously,” Thorin said impatiently. “My nephews are out there! But what does that have to do with anything?”

Bilbo rolled his eyes upwards. “Do I really need to spell it out for you? I did it for you.”

Thorin cleared his throat, unsure of how to process that statement, all of his earlier ire forgotten. “I… thank you, Bilbo.”

Bilbo waved his apology away. “You still have a lot of work to do mastering this protection rune, that’s where you should be focusing your energy.”

Thorin pulled his notebook back across the table agreeably enough, sensing that Bilbo didn’t want to discuss it further. He couldn’t help but wonder if the pink flush across Bilbo’s face - embarrassment? Annoyance? He couldn’t tell - was an unconscious reaction or a deliberate choice Bilbo was making.

It wasn’t until much later, when he was lying awake in his sleeping bag, turning runes over in his head, it occurred to him to wonder what Bilbo meant about his eyes, how many he actually had, how far he could see.

Can he see me now? Thorin wondered to himself, with a shiver of something that wasn’t entirely fear. And then, what does he actually look like? 

---

“Are you one of the Valar?” Thorin asked bluntly one evening as they sat together in the dining hall long after everyone else had gone to bed, his pen hovering over a page of complex inscriptions, and Bilbo laughed so long and hard that Thorin stopped being slightly annoyed at his reaction and started to laugh too, just at the absurdity of the conversation.

“I am not, though I think maybe I should be flattered you think so,” Bilbo said at last, taking a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and dabbing at his eyes. “No, I was ancient when those children first sang this world into being. I’m not from here,” he said, spreading his arms out to encompass Thorin’s living room, and presumably everything else outside it. “I’m from… Beyond. Elsewhere. Outside.”

“How old are you?” Thorin asked, a slow creeping dread replacing his earlier laughter. “And Outside what?”

“As old as the dark between the first stars,” Bilbo replied promptly. “And Outside of everything you understand as being real. I can’t explain it any better, I’m afraid.”

“I must seem like a child to you,” Thorin mused aloud, more shaken by his words than he liked to admit. “Or like nothing at all.”

“No,” Bilbo said, reaching over the table to pat his hand. “In a thousand worlds and lifetimes, I’ve never met anyone like you.”

Thorin found himself replaying that touch, those words, for a long time.

Autumn came and went, and the winter snows started. Although the inside of the mountain was not exposed to the elements, it was too cold to camp outside, and would soon be too dangerous to traverse the hidden stairs up and down in the bitter cold. The crew hadn’t yet reached the main door - they were moving slowly, room by room, corridor by corridor, and were still many levels above where the great door stood closed and locked. As much as no one wanted to admit it, they needed to leave the mountain until the snow melted.

On his last trip before the excavations resumed in spring, Thorin wrote runes of closing and protection into the hidden door, and it obligingly locked itself tightly closed.

“You’ll be able to open it again, won’t you?” Bofur said nervously, and Thorin nodded. He had no doubts at all. Bofur nodded, as reluctant as Thorin was to leave, but slowly headed down the long steps again. They’d put ropes along the outside edge to make it safer, but soon it would be impossible to climb at all.

“I have nothing left to teach you,” Bilbo said as he stood next to him, and although his tone was proudly fond, his expression was sad, and with a jolt, Thorin realised what he was going to say.

“You’re leaving,” he said, surprised at how hurt he felt at just the thought of it.

“Yes,” Bilbo agreed. “I have already stayed for longer than I intended. I had good company, after all.” He shot a warm little glance up at Thorin, then away again. “But I still haven’t yet fully recovered from my captivity, and to do that, I need to go home, be in my true form for a while.”

“You never said you were in pain,” Thorin said sharply, looking him up and down as if he were expecting to see blood.

Bilbo waved a hand, dismissing his concern. “Pain is overstating it. It’s more like… wearing shoes that are too small for too long. There’s no cure until you take them off.” He laughed a little at his own analogy, wiggling his bare halfling toes, but Thorin didn’t.

It was ridiculous, feeling this conflicted about Bilbo leaving. He liked Bilbo, he could admit it now, but as he kept on saying, he wasn’t mortal. Thorin would die of old age, and Bilbo would continue onwards like nothing had changed. Did Thorin really expect him to stay forever? Apparently he did. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“When are you leaving?” he asked numbly.

Bilbo looked surprised. “You’re the only one I have to say goodbye to,” he pointed out softly. “Everyone else will forget me as soon as I go.”

“But not me,” Thorin pressed urgently, and Bilbo shook his head, eyes wide and surprised.

“Not unless you want to,” he replied. “Do you want to?”

Thorin shook his head, words failing him. Bilbo smiled warmly and held out his hand. “Goodbye, then, Thorin. Thank you for freeing me. I hope that you get everything you deserve going forward.”

Thorin shook his head, didn’t take his hand. “Come over to mine for dinner this evening,” he said instead. “A proper goodbye.”

Bilbo drew his hand back slowly, a soft, surprised expression on his face. “I’ve never had a proper goodbye,” he said, voice small and wondering. “I’d like that.”

“Six o’clock?” Thorin checked, and Bilbo smiled and nodded before vanishing again.

Thorin shook his head, a fond reluctant smile on his face as he started the long climb back down.

---

That evening, Bilbo arrived at exactly six, wearing a fancier suit than normal and holding a bottle of wine.

He didn’t need to eat, Thorin had already learned, but he enjoyed it. Sometimes Thorin wondered if he’d taken on a halfling appetite along with his form.

Thorin was a decent, if not spectacular, cook and he’d prepared the one recipe he knew very well indeed, a traditional dwarven stew that had been his father’s speciality, to which Bilbo tucked into with every sign of appreciation.

Sooner than he’d like, the stew was eaten and the wine was drunk. The conversation had flowed easily between them, although there was an undercurrent of sadness too - Thorin didn’t like to think that this was the last conversation they would ever share.

He didn’t know exactly when he’d gone from fearing Bilbo to fearing missing him, but it weighed heavily on him even as he forced a smile when Bilbo eventually, reluctantly stood.

“Are you sure there’s nothing else I can give you to repay you?” Bilbo asked. “I can still arrange fortune and fame before I go!”

Thorin shook his head. “Between my classes having a waiting list and the book tour I’m being forced to go on next year by the university, I already have more fame than I know what to do with,” he said. “And I’ve got plenty of fortune, if you count all the funding I’m getting.”

Bilbo laughed a little. “It’s all more than deserved, Thorin.”

He took a deep breath, the question he’d most been wondering about on the tip of his tongue. Bilbo looked at him, seeing his hesitation, and nodded encouragingly.

“Can I see your true form before you go?” he asked, and immediately felt ridiculous. But every glimpse of Bilbo’s true form, every inconsistent shadow or impression of size played on his mind and he wanted, no needed, to know the truth. It was more than simple curiosity although Thorin couldn’t quite explain the reason behind his obsession, even to himself.

He wanted to see, if just once, if only for a moment.

Bilbo looked very uncertain. “I exist in more dimensions than your eyes can comprehend, Thorin. I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea. I'm sorry.”

“Just a glimpse, then, a hint, a shadow, anything,” Thorin said, knowing he sounded desperate and not caring. “Something so that I can know you as you truly are.”

“You already know me better than anybody in this world, living or dead,” Bilbo murmured quietly to him, taking both his hands in his. “In any world, even. But if you truly want this”-

“I do,” Thorin interjected, heart racing with anticipation.

- “Then I suppose a tiny peek won’t hurt.” Bilbo urged him backwards into the dining chair he’d recently vacated. “Close your eyes.”

“Bilbo…” Thorin objected.

“You won’t need them,” Bilbo assured him. “Close them, just for a moment.”

Thorin closed his eyes. The first thing he noticed was the silence. The ticking of his kitchen clock, the beating of his heart, the television he hadn’t turned off in the other room, all faded away to nothing. The silence was so profound he could taste it on his tongue. He started to tremble despite himself.

Despite his closed eyes, he could see an impression of Bilbo’s face in front of him, and he smiled, before his familiar halfling features unfolded before his eyes into something beyond words, something beautiful and horrifying and perfect and awful and squirming and grasping and dancing. It went on forever, as vast as a dying star and just as bright, and behind or in front or within him there was something else moving, something as enormous as Bilbo, and Thorin came to realise in a jolting shock that there were more things like Bilbo out there. So many more, and if they looked they would see him -

A vein throbbed in his forehead. In the midst of everything he could see, he could still make out the familiar gleam of Bilbo’s bright eyes, and he stared fixedly at them, like they could guide him back from wherever he’d gone. He raised one hand, as heavy as a mountain, and dragged the thing that was Bilbo towards him, pressing his lips to where his mouth had once been, before it was replaced by the writhing mass of vine-like tendrils that was in front of him, grasping for connection like a drowning man for a lifeline.

He felt a gasp of something that wasn’t breath against his lips, and his mind slipped into darkness.

He didn’t know when he’d fallen from the chair, or when Bilbo had gathered him up and put him to bed, but when he next had full awareness of himself, Bilbo was talking like he’d been talking for a while.

“... my fault. You wanted to know me, and I wanted to be known by you. It was stupid of me, reckless, risking your mind, your perfect, remarkable mind. When I was trapped, you know, there were minds that I could speak to, like candle flames in the darkness, but your mind was like a burning beacon, guiding me to freedom. I’ve grown so very fond of you Thorin, so much so that it makes me unwise. Please, come back to me.”

“I’m here,” he mumbled. His voice was thick, like he’d been screaming. There was wetness on his pillow, like he’d been crying. One of Bilbo’s hands was covering his eyes, and the other was stroking his hair, like he could gather up Thorin’s unspooled consciousness and give it back to him.

“I’m sorry,” Bilbo said, sounding wretched. It sounded like he’d been crying too.

“I’m not,” Thorin answered after a long moment of consideration. “You’re beautiful. Terrible too, but beautiful. Only poetry could do you justice and I don’t have the words.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Poetry or madness, or both.”

Bilbo laughed shakily. “That’s not what I expected you to say.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t expect you to kiss me, either.”

Thorin managed to peel an eye open. Bilbo was touching his lips in something like wonder.

“You’re still leaving?” Thorin asked after a while and Bilbo nodded, more fervently than before.

“It’s safer for you if I do,” Bilbo said, cheeks turning pink. Thorin idly wondered how his true form was reacting. He still wanted to know even has his mind shied away from the memory of it. “I forget myself, when I’m with you. I could really hurt you next time.”

“You wouldn’t,” Thorin told him, completely sure. “Not on purpose.”

“Not on purpose,” Bilbo agreed, “but hurt is still hurt, even if I don't mean it. You showed me that.”

Thorin considered this for a while. Bilbo’s hand continued moving in his hair, slow and soothing. The horror of what he’d seen started fading, but the awe remained. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was something Bilbo was doing, or if it was simply his own mind protecting itself.

“There are more things like you,” he whispered, and Bilbo made a humming noise again.

“Not really like me,” he said carefully. “They have no interest in mortals and we should keep it that way. Best to forget about them. Thinking about them might make them notice you.”

“I won’t ever forget.” He started shivering hard.

“You will,” Bilbo promised. “When you wake up, you’ll only remember what you want to remember. The rest will be nothing more than a bad dream.”

“I’ll remember you, but you’ll be gone.” Thorin turned his head so that it was pressing into Bilbo’s leg. Bilbo’s grip on his hair tightened for a moment.

“Not forever,” he replied at last. “I can still speak to you in dreams, now and then, if you would like me to.”

“Yes,” Thorin breathed. “I’d like that.”

“Then go to sleep,” Bilbo soothed. “When you wake, everything will be alright again.”

They were quiet for a long time. When Thorin felt his eyes closing, he forced them open, not wanting to find Bilbo gone.

“I have your book,” he confessed. “I’ve had it all along.”

“I know,” Bilbo answered, some of the sadness leaving his voice. “You are many wonderful things, my dear, but a good liar is not one of them.”

“It’s yours,” Thorin managed before he truly fell asleep. “Take it, when you go.”

When he woke, his mind was still and quiet. The memory of Bilbo’s true form wasn’t quite there - he could remember how vast it was, how bright, but nothing else - and Bilbo wasn’t beside him. The bed was cold, and Thorin felt a curious grief build up inside him.

He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He’d barely begun to understand what exactly Bilbo meant to him, and now he was gone.

He was tempted to lie in bed for a while longer, mulling over his loss, when his stomach made itself known to him, and he pushed himself upwards with a sigh. When he sat up, something fell from his chest to the bed. It was the book, still small and blue, but now the pages weren’t empty.

Inside was a series of runes, so many they almost overlapped, twisting in front of his eyes like they were shy. They were words he didn’t know, but still he got the impression of what they meant.

A smile touched his lips, and his sadness lessened a touch.

Bilbo had left him with his true name.

---

A couple of days after Bilbo left, Thorin found himself sitting across from Balin in their usual pub, a glass of wine untouched before him. His mind still felt delicate, but being in a familar location surrounded by people was grounding him in a way his empty home could not.

“Are you alright, Thorin?” Balin asked, his voice careful and concerned.

“Of course,” Thorin replied, although it felt like a lie.

Balin’s expression indicated that it sounded like one too. “After you’ve worked so hard,” he began, “and proved all your detractors wrong so magnificently, I thought you’d be, well, happier.”

For a moment, Thorin thought about telling the whole truth, but the truth would only cause Balin to worry more, specifically about him, because the truth was so unbelievable.

“I met someone,” he said instead, because he found that he did want to talk about Bilbo, if only a little. The weight of missing him and the weight of his forgotten vision were all tangled up together and he didn’t know how to unpick the knots in his mind.

Balin’s eyes widened in surprise. Obviously he hadn’t expected Thorin to say that. He leaned forward, trying to hide his eagerness. “Someone?” he prompted.

“A… visiting professor,” Thorin replied. He was a terrible liar, but the backstory Bilbo had tried to invent for himself on their first meeting was easy enough to adapt. “We spent quite a bit of time together, discussing my book, but he had to leave.”

“Where does he live?” Balin asked lightly. “The moon? Thorin, just because we have our heads in the past doesn’t mean we actually live in the Third Age. There are cars, trains, phones, and plenty of other ways to stay in touch.”

Thorin almost smiled at Balin’s words. “I know,” he replied. “It’s just complicated. And I barely know him.”

“All relationships are complicated, especially to start," Balin replied. “You’ve spent your entire life in pursuit of your theory,” Balin pointed out gently. “Perhaps it’s time to focus on your personal life for a while. You deserve good things, Thorin.”

“Maybe,” Thorin said, already feeling lighter. It wasn’t normal, what he’d found, what he wanted, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe something good would come of them, after all.

Balin stood and clapped a hand on Thorin’s shoulder. “My round, I think,” he grinned, surprisingly impishly. “Then I want to hear all about your mysterious professor.”

“Maybe not all,” Thorin demurred, taking a sip of his wine, and Balin laughed, not knowing how much Thorin meant that.

---

Winter wore on.

Thorin taught his classes, demonstrated runic magic, and wrote his book. Occasionally he had interviews where he stressed all along that his father had been correct, he’d simply made an intuitive leap of logic that he’d not been able to fully explain at the time.

None of his detractors made any attempt at a counter argument. Some of them published retractions of their previous criticisms. It was academic revenge at its finest, and Thorin found a fierce sort of satisfaction in that.

He met up with his nephews and others from the team, to talk about what they’d already found and the first steps they’d take in the spring. None of them ever mentioned Bilbo. They’d truly forgotten him, leaving Thorin alone with his memories.

The first time Bilbo appeared in his dream, Thorin couldn’t help but notice that he seemed better. He was still carefully in his halfling form, but it looked healthier, more vital, and Thorin realised for the first time how much of his discomfort Bilbo had hid from him.

They walked through the dream city in a comfortable silence. Bilbo squeezed his hand tightly just before he woke.

The next few dreams - not every night, perhaps once a week - they started talking again. About Thorin’s work, about Bilbo’s library. About everything they could think of, anything that crossed their minds.

After a few more dreams, Bilbo gave him a farewell kiss. He kissed like he’d only ever read about it before, like he wasn’t used to having lips, but Thorin didn’t mind at all.

His mind grew stronger, his runes easier to craft. He was almost perfectly content.

Every night before he slept, Thorin would read the little blue book, trying to figure out Bilbo’s true name. It was as complicated as Bilbo was himself, and it was two years before he was confident enough in his understanding to try his theory.

Years of dream talks and dream kisses. Years of excavation with years yet to go, years of seeing magic grow among dwarves once more, before Thorin tried a ritual of his own.

The runes he crafted were not a summons, but an invitation. The book he shaped into a doorway, not a prison.

He spoke Bilbo’s true name, and felt the universe quiver for a moment.

Bilbo stepped through a doorway made of light, and took Thorin’s hands in his own.

“I’m back,” he said with a smile that Thorin bent down and kissed.