Chapter Text
“So… This is the Hobbit.”
It was a long time before Billa stopped laughing.
She was still laughing about it the next morning as the sausages in her pan popped and sizzled along with her, seeming to think it was all just as amusing as she did. She gave them a jolly shake and relished the fizzing sound. The fragrant smoke rising from where they fried in the cast iron skillet was struck through by the noonday sun and it made all the crackling oils catch the light like little fireworks, the only thing their night had been missing.
It was well after elevenses on this morning after May Day. In fact it was almost time for luncheon but Billa was still the first and only one up to enjoy the welcome smell of good food. Well… almost the only one. Another pleasant sound was reaching Billa’s ears over the symphony of crackling sausages and it told her that Dwalin was already up and sharpening his axe beneath the oak tree, as he often did on such a sunny day as this.
Billa looked up at the window above her head, its circular pane propped wide open. How long would it take the smell of sausages to reach him? Especially when she knew how much he liked these sausages in particular, a splendid and delicious creation from Folco and Daisy.
A smile stretched across her face at the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin in the parlor behind her, snoring softly on their makeshift mat and blankets, their daughter nestled warmly between them. Since Dain Piggyfoot had been very much adopted instead, and by no one more than their own daughter, she found out they had been stocking the pantry with all manner of things pig to replace what Dain Piggyfoot was supposed to be: eaten. Links and links of sausages looped around and hung from every conceivable hooked thing in the pantry, jars of mincemeat, salt pork, pork chops, sides of bacon, rendered fat for cooking, feet for pickling, ham hocks for soup and even a whole cured shoulder and they still had a ways to go yet before they reached an amount that could claim to be equal to Dain Piggyfoot and his great and terrible mass.
There had never been so many pig parts in Bag End’s pantry but it suited Billa just fine with all these dwarves to feed, not to mention their newest arrival.
Billa shook her head at all of it with a heart full of laughter.
Dís had burst into their world out of thin air and suddenly the house felt fuller than the pantry. In size, she was only a little smaller than her brother but somehow bigger than any dwarf Billa had ever met and that included Bombur. Thought of the dwarf sent a pang through her laughing heart. Oh, how she missed Bombur and his cooking spoon. His appetite for everything! Though, Dís could give him a run for his money after seeing her in action- no one ate more pig parts last night than Dís.
If she kept at it, they wouldn’t all stay fed for long.
Then a sigh disturbed the smoke rising from the hot pan as a different pang hit her heart.
She’d forgotten.
They wouldn’t be staying in the Shire for long.
It was a thought she had kept shoved in that box in the back of her mind since she'd returned to her home to wallow alone and found it full of dwarves instead.
For someone who travelled so light, Dís had still managed to pack a thousand questions that Billa had been avoiding in the back of her mind since she'd found dwarves in her home and when she burst into their world, it burst the little Shire-shaped bubble they’d been living in too.
She hadn't meant to indulge so deeply in denial but it was such a lovely bubble.
Billa looked up at the window again and the sun streaming through it. She looked down at the skin of her arm and the way the sun lit the freckles smattered across them. The wooden spoon in her hand, her favorite one. The pan she'd been making sausages in since she was knee-high to a grasshopper before she could even see over the top of the stove. The plate, blue and white, waiting faithfully for it's food as it had every meal for decades. Her mother's old, white apron, tied just under breast, the only place it could be tied these days.
It caught the sunlight too, the white knot against her back tying her heart to sweet thought of her mother. Belladonna Baggins was never far inside these happy days within Bag End but Billa felt especially close to her whenever she wore it, for the worn, scrappy apron was just as old as she. It had been patched up so many times it was more scrap than apron but once it had been new. Once it was tied beneath her mothers breast as she sat by the same stove, too tired to stand for long with a growing belly beneath it.
The hand Billa was not using for cooking was already resting on the curve she loved so, stroking it softly with her thumb and revelling in it's changing shape, even if Daisy was finally starting to pass her up in sheer size.
A little laugh left her for her mother would not have been able to keep her hands away, no matter it's size.
Now here was a question that was not from her box, but new: Would she still feel her mother like this in the mountain? Would Belladonna Baggins be this close as Billa's time drew near so far away from their home?
It was a bit of a rhetorical question. Erebor was waiting for them, no matter the answer, and it needed them sorely. Well, really it needed Thorin but there was no where he could go that Billa would not follow.
And that made a smile return to Billa's face, as warm as the light from the window.
For Billa knew that if Belladonna were alive, she still would go and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that her mother would cheer every step she took away from the house, away from them, if that path led to her happiness, if it followed after the love of her heart. Her father too would let her go and he would bless her for it, him who would have followed his wife to Dol Amroth and back again just to see her smile.
At the end of the day, if anyone knew about following your heart to the ends of the earth, it was a Baggins.
Still, the peace now washing over her spirit was not quite an answer to the mountain of questions in Billa's mind, boucing around like acorns as she made their morning meal, steeped in all the familiar comforts around her. Such questions as: exactly how much of Bag End could she take with her? Could she bring her pan? Her spoon? Certainly the apron. Certainly not the plates. Maybe their bed?
What of the food? What was to become of all those pig parts when they left?
And perhaps the biggest question of all: How well could Dain Piggyfoot travel?
An egg cracked across the peace of the kitchen but it was just another welcome sound from her own hand, quickly followed by another and another.
It made her stomach growl.
A mountain full of questions could certainly wait until after she ate.
“Is this breakfast or lunch?”
Billa nearly cracked an egg onto the floor at the unexpected and still unfamiliar voice from the hall and turned to find Dís looking remarkably well in the morning light. Her beard was free of twigs and finely done and she wore a dress instead of trousers. It looked a bit formal for the Shire and was decidedly dwarvish but it suited her very well indeed.
Billa recovered from the surprise in no time, quick and warm, and chirped back with a smile, “Both, if it suits you!”
Apparently laughing in your new sister-in-laws face at your first meeting was all it took for her to like you right away and the feeling was gloriously mutual.
“It smells good.” Dís told her earnestly as she pulled up a chair like it was just another morning in a familiar place and not the first one she’d ever seen in this smial. Billa found she liked that.
“You’re the first one up, so you've won the first plate!” she told Dís and then rummaged through her brain for one of the Khuzdul words she’d been taught the night before. “…Namad?”
Dís looked amused, thank Yavannah, and gently corrected her, “While that does work, the one you’re looking for is Agnât’nana.”
“Agnât’nana.” Billa parroted back, butchering the pronunciation something awful but still, she appreciated the chance to practice.
Then she purposely fell quiet, waiting with bated breath for the familiar sound she’d grown unfathomable affection for, and was rewarded when one of her old chairs groaned in protest under the weight of a dwarf.
A few more eggs dropped into the pan and fried up quickly. Wanting to be a good host (and wanting to impress the skirts off her new sister-in-law) Billa took extra care to make the meal as inviting as possible. It also helped to remember her own husbands very first and most audacious breakfast order from a lifetime ago, the one that came with a side of the worst first impression anyone could possibly make in the home of a Hobbit they’d just met.
His voice sounded so different in her head.
I like six eggs with my ham. Mind you, don’t break ‘em.
Six eggs yolks smiled up at her from one of her mother’s plates and she smiled back at all those warm little suns shining light into their morning. Three sausages would do, she hoped, and if they didn’t, more would come anyway. She looked over at the coils of cured meat just waiting for their turn to be fried. More would definitely not be an issue.
Billa might never be one for skirts but the way they swung when she twirled to the table added a certain drama to things and made the plate she set in front of Dís that much more inviting. She hoped. She twirled and she turned and then the sight of Thorin filling the doorway of the parlor nearly knocked her over. Of course he was already smiling at her and holding Maisy in his arm as she rubbed her sleepy eyes and yawned into the sunny kitchen.
“Good gracious!” Billa laughed in surprise and then quickly added a bright “Good morning!” after it.
She went straight to Thorin’s side as if some unseen force had pulled her to him and stood on her tiptoes for a kiss.
He granted it eagerly.
“Good morning.” he answered, low and pleasant, his breath still close enough to hit her lips and his voice still thick with sleep. "Have you eaten?"
Billa nodded happily at his consideration and told a small lie, willing her stomach not to growl so she could finish feeding her guests first.
"Some bread and butter. Plenty for now!"
He nodded back and pressed one more kiss to the top of her curly head.
“G’mornin’.” Daisy mumbled with an arm draped heavily over Thorin’s shoulder. The green ribbon in her hair was half undone and her lovely festival dress was rumpled well and good from such a long night.
‘I will miss these precious ‘Good mornings’! Billa thought suddenly with a wave of bittersweet emotion that immediately threatened to overtake the peace and pleasure of so many unbroken egg yolks. 'How many more will there be?'
'No, no!' She shook her head. 'Breakfast first! Questions later.'
Then Thorin’s heavy hand came down on Dís’ shoulder as he came into the kitchen and she reached up to give it a returning squeeze. She greeted him only after the large bite of egg in her mouth was swallowed down.
“Bakn Galikh, Nadad.”
Grinning from ear to ear at another chair groaning beneath another dwarf, Billa was just about to turn right back to the pan still hot over the fire, she had a few more bellies to fill this morning after all, but for the curious quiet that settled at the table. She peered over at her new company and saw across the table that Maisy had at last rubbed all the sleep from her eyes only to look up right at Dís.
The rest of them had stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning, eating their very traditional bacon and eggs and getting acquainted with their new Dwarrowdam but Maisy herself had never stirred and so they had yet to be introduced. Now that didn’t mean the girl was afraid. No, this was Maisy. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in the brave little lass as she blinked at a completely new stranger from Mr. Thorin’s lap but Billa still had to bite back her giggles for the girl was openly staring and she could well guess why.
It was only a matter of seconds before Maisy, being very much herself now she was awake, could go no longer without asking a question.
“Why are you wearing a dress?” she asked point blank.
Dís looked quietly impressed by the girls directness and spared a glance down at the blue dress she clearly preferred to dirty travel clothes. “It is my dress and I wished to wear it.”
“But only ladies wear dresses.” Maisy pushed gently, making Thorin huff in pure amusement. His eyes danced as they took in his sisters reaction from across the table.
She arched a brow but her eyes were dancing too.
“A good thing, then, that I am a lady.”
When Maisy gasped, Billa didn’t quite succeed in hiding a great laugh behind her hand.
“But you have a beard!”
It was a fair exclamation, Billa was still getting used to the sight herself even if she already liked it.
Dís’ answers were frank and patient. “I do.”
“Ladies don’t have beards.”
“Perhaps not but dwarves do.”
“You’re a dwarf? Like Mr. Thorin?” Maisy gasped again, “Like Bofur?”
Now Dís laughed too.
“Yes, raklûna. Just like them.”
They watched Maisy turn thoughtful then, eyeing the raven hair on Dís’ face with new interest. It was brushed, oiled to make it shine and done so finely that not a single hair was out of place in all the braids woven together in the grand masterpiece. There were dozens of them running over each other like little interconnecting streams and all of them guiding the cascade of shining hair flowing out like an ocean from under her chin. It truly was a work of art, an immediate testament to the pride that dwarves took in their hair. Billa could see from across the kitchen the sapphires woven carefully into the braids. They sparkled in Maisy's eyes as she took in the first beard she'd ever seen that could be called beautiful.
“It’s very pretty.” she said at last with a little smile and both dwarves at the table drew themselves up in the presence of such a high compliment.
Dís nodded at the child with all the gravity she would give an adult. “Thank you.” she said with great feeling.
Maisy puffed out her chest like a proud little bird who knew she’d said just the right thing.
“The blue brings out your eyes.” Billa added easily, finally turning back to the pan that was getting dangerously close to smoking. The low fire in the stove popped underneath it and she heard again the slice of stone against an axe from outside. She wondered how many eggs Dwalin would be wanting.
“Yours are green.” Dís said to the back hunched over the fire.
“Yes. Like my mothers.” Billa responded without turning and tossed more sausages on to sear.
Remembering her cousins stories of first meetings and in-laws, Billa was surprised. Conversing with a new family member was not something she expected to enjoy so much but it was brightening the morning very well. She always did enjoy company in the kitchen and Dís’ frank and open nature, the nature of a Dwarf, was one Billa had grown to love quite well indeed. Who could have guessed it would be so nice to talk with someone who simply said what they were thinking at the time?
“You will need emeralds and your beads will be gold.” said Dís with a note of resolution that received no response but a snort from Thorin.
“You'll have to first succeed where we could not.” he said to her but when Billa turned to fuss at him she saw nothing but good humor on his face. “We were told that those are not things Hobbits need very much of.”
“So I’ve heard.” Dís arched an assessing brow at Billa.
Billa grinned over her shoulder at the two of them and gave the pan another little shake. She cracked an egg into the pause that followed what she thought was a fine assessment of Hobbit priorities, though the sapphires were beautiful.
‘Emeralds must be green.’ She thought, having never laid eyes on such treasures any more than she’d ever seen a beard on a woman. Perhaps she had before, in the treasury, but it’s not like she knew any of those gems by name like a dwarf would.
Then Dís spoke again.
“I wonder…” Dís spoke again, her voice low but Billa could still hear the note of curiosity in it, “Would the Queen under the Mountain refuse its gifts?”
The question was posed in a tone that Billa was not expecting and it took far too long to register that it had been posed to her.
When she turned to look, a pair of blue eyes were already fixed on hers.
----------------
Maybe it was the sapphires.
Her beads weren't gold so of course it must be the sapphires.
Thorin narrowed his eyes at his sister from across Bag End's little wooden kitchen table. The sapphires winked at him but they only brought out the vibrant color of her dress, a special shade of Durin blue only made in Ered Luin. That, in turn, only brought out the color of her eyes, a penetrating shade of blue that could bore a hole through stone, looking right through you and then straight through to Mahal. Their grandmothers eyes. Eyes that had no place in the kitchen of Bag End.
No… It wasn't the sapphires. It was just Dís.
Everything about her had set the whole place on its head in a single night. Now in the brightness of morning that made those sapphires twinkle so relentlessly, all he could do was blink against the light, blinded by all these little details so loudly reminding him that this was not another peaceful Hobbit sitting here in this Hobbit kitchen. This was a dwarf.
He wasn't sure what she was getting at yet but that didn't stop the headache coming on. His hand that wasn't holding Maisy steady on his lap nearly came up to rub the scar over his eye. It had been an entire month since he'd felt the need to do that.
"Hobbits do not wear treasures in their hair and it means no insult.” he told her, trying to keep the edge from his voice while also resisting the urge to roll his eyes at his sister.
Dís leaned forward anyway as if he had, not mincing words no matter how easy the morning had been.
"A Hobbit Ázbad is still Ázbad. The mountain is not the Shire. It will know the insult whether she means it or not.”
It was surprisingly difficult not to pinch the bridge of his nose as the headache roared to the front of his head.
There were few beings in the world he knew better than his sister and she’d just pulled a classic move. He was a little embarrassed that it took him so by surprise, even after all their time apart, because it shouldn’t have. He’d seen it many, many times. In council meetings, formal hearings, family dinners…
It all came down to the profound lack of patience that had defined Dís’ personality since she was a pebble, a trait everyone said she would grow out of. Only she never did.
Whenever Dís had something on her mind, she never sat on it for long. It just wasn’t in her nature. She could only hold it secret until the first possible opening appeared which she would then proceed to charge through like a mountain ram and suddenly it was everyone else’s problem.
And now the ram was charging in a place where there was no room for it to go anywhere.
The warmth of the kitchen suddenly felt too close.
Then it fled entirely.
Five minutes into their first morning together in two years and suddenly there was a great, black rock in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly Bag End was gone and he was in the council room of Ered Luin, sitting across the great stone table from his sister and her clenched fists, the princess who was spoiling for a fight just to make a point.
And then a hand touched his shoulder and Thorin's pounding heart slowed.
Then warmed.
A plate was set on the table before him as an even smaller hand shot out into his line of sight just to grab a sausage from it. Maisy's unsteady weight on his lap and the happy sound of her chewing and smacking brought him the rest of the way down and then he was back at Bag End's little wooden kitchen table again. He even smiled at the sight of such a full and perfect plate and all six eggs seemed to smile back at him.
How did she know?
Dís had shoved another egg into her mouth across the table and chewed with visible satisfaction, looking wholly unbothered by the headache she was the whole cause of.
"You know I'm right."
"Out with it, then. What is this great insult?" asked his yasîth beside him who, to her credit, only sounded a little ruffled.
"And why are you bringing it up now?" Thorin added as he reached eagerly for his fork. The way he stabbed his egg wasn't nearly as forceful as it could have been purely out of respect for Billa's plates.
Dís speared another sausage with no such hang-ups.
"Because there's no time."
The egg on its way to his mouth stopped just short of it. "No time? What are you talking about?"
A mouthful of sausage somehow did not interfere with the gravity of Dís next words.
"They know."
He knew who she meant and he felt a sigh coming on.
"The council? What exactly do they know?" the king asked indulgently around an entire egg. "And more importantly, what does it matter?"
Now Dís did roll her eyes at him but the next minute they were boring into him again and they looked unnervingly soft.
"Thorin. They know."
An unbidden flash of gold crossed his vision before it went flat with shame.
Ah.
The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently.
Thorin set down his fork just to reach up and squeeze back.
He ignored the dread growing like moss on the rock in his stomach.
"Yes." he spoke slowly. Carefully. "Dain said as much."
"Dain Piggyfoot?" an excited little voice jumped up from his lap, "What did he say, what did he say?"
Maisy's little hands were on his cheeks in a flash and her excited face filled his vision.
Dís' brow immediately furrowed behind her at the familiarity in the little one's voice.
"Dain is here?" she asked doubtfully then paused. "Dain… Piggyfoot?"
"Oh, yes." Billa grinned. She'd sat back down to tend the food. "We keep him out back."
Thorin looked into Maisy's eyes and couldn't quite tamp down the smile brought on by the two Hobbits in the room and the two Hobbits in the next one, for snoring could no longer be heard between the kitchen and the parlor- all of them such endearing creatures. Always listening whether or not you remembered they were.
"No, mimûna." he said to the bright little face, "There is another Dain you have yet to meet."
"Is he a pig, too?"
He shrugged a shoulder. "More of a boar… but that depends on who you ask."
Dís snorted, finally looking appropriately amused. "Dain Piggyfoot…"
"The first!" Billa added cheerily.
Just then, the green front door swung open and Dwalin walked in, nodding in the direction of the smell of breakfast and Thorin gave a nod in return.
"The first or the second, he must have told you- should have told you everything." Dís answered Thorin back as her shoulders relaxed just a little. "Did he?"
Thorin sighed, abandoning hope of the conversation moving on, particularly the hope of it moving on until Billa was out of earshot.
His hand finally made contact with that scar again."Of course he did. Why do you think the boys are here?"
"Ah, yes. Two sons who have yet to greet their mother." Dís smiled at their mention, "Where are they?"
"Sleeping it off." called Dwalin who was still shedding outer layers by the front door, making her jump. He left his axes in their place by the coat pegs and lumbered in, his noise barreling through any pretense there was left for the Boffins to keep pretending they were asleep. "Have you told him, then?" he asked Dís who eyed him with annoyance.
A mumbled curse in Khuzdul under her breath glanced off the leather strapped to his shoulder.
"I was just about to."
"Maisy!" a sleepy voice called from the parlor.
"Oh!" The little lass scrambled off of Thorin's lap, still holding onto the last sausage. Thorin could practically hear the adorable logic of a small child in motion in those quick steps for the sooner she left, the sooner she could return to the grown-ups and the riveting conversation she wanted to stay in. She practically skipped on those light little feet through the kitchen doorway, leaving Thorin thoroughly dishevelled but smiling after.
The smile fled out of sight with Maisy.
Thorin then treated his sister to a flat look, growing more and more impatient with the speed at which Dís chose to relay information.
Billa was in the room. The cat was out of the bag.
Where was the mountain ram?
Then another sigh came into the charged silence as Thorin mentally prepared himself to ask the question, forgetting whatever the answer might be, only the sigh was not his.
"Alright, what's going on?" Billa asked, sounding just as impatient as he was. She was still sat at the stove but her chair was turned toward the conversation she couldn't keep out of any longer. Her voice was calm enough over the eggs she cracked into the pan but Thorin knew the sound of her worry too well to miss it. Even barely there, it clenched over his heart like a fist.
It was the reason he hadn't told her yet.
Audience be damned, Thorin wasn't going to let her barrell on ahead without him no matter how many Hobbits were listening. This was his yasîth and she deserved to know even if he didn't want her to. At the very least, she would have found out anyway. Hobbits always did.
Now there was another question- Where did he begin?
"It's the council." He cleared his throat for a long ride, turning to face her where she sat behind him, "Before we left for the mountain, things between us were… tense."
Dwalin snorted.
"I remember they didn't want you going." she responded with no small amount of nerves, even if Thorin was the only one who could hear them.
He'd swear she also sounded hungry… did she not eat as she said she did?
"Didn't want him going?" Dís barked with incredulous laughter.
Billa's eyes slid over to her. "What else didn't they want?"
Dís blinked and her mouth fell open. No words came out of it.
Thorin could see the exact moment his sister realized exactly how much Billa did not know.
"Well… once he'd gone…" she started painfully.
"They didn't want him back." Dwalin finished with ease.
Thorin arched a humorless brow at him but then the sound of Billa rising from her chair pulled his eyes back to her spot by the stove. It was new, this sound she made when she left her seat, not quite a grunt and not quite a sigh. Just a small sound of effort as she leaned forward and put a little extra 'umph' in the legs to stand.
Her back arched in a lovely stretch that he was more than ready to admire while her hands went behind her and pushed her hips forward to stretch the ache away.
Then a hand went to the top of her belly as she steadied herself.
She said it wasn't so heavy just yet but there's no question it was bigger. It practically rose to meet her hand beneath the apron gathered over it. Thorin couldn't put into words what it meant to him to see it, to watch it change.
He let the feeling wash over him and its current coolled his rising temper, the waves breaking with one thought cresting before them more beautiful than anything.
Their child was growing.
Her belly practically led the way as she walked to Dwalin with another full plate.
Thorin wanted to reach for her and pull her into his lap and shove a forkful of egg into her mouth but he'd never hear the end of it from Billa for doing so in front of his sister. Hobbit proprieties were so odd… No one present in the house had gotten her social niceties in such a twist and here was her own kin keeping her from her husbands lap? It made no sense. And so, Thorin contented himself with staring. He could stare at her all day, often did, probably always would, but after she gave Dwalin his plate, she turned around and pointed her uneasy eyes right at him.
"I don't understand." she told him very honestly, "What exactly did they think you meant when you told them you were reclaiming the throne?"
Dwalin snorted again.
Billa ignored him, staring Thorin down with insistence. "They must have known your purpose."
He shook his head a bit. "My right to rule the mountain was never disputed, only my chance of success in taking it back."
Dís groaned, giving the table its first good smack of the morning, "This is not about the council! They are our friends and kin, mostly, and even without their support Thorin had their respect. This is about the mess of a single Dwarrow." she shook her head in disgust, "One slimy, despicable Dwarrow."
"Who?" Billa asked with the burning curiosity that came so naturally to hobbits.
"Someone not worth the breath of speaking his name." Thorin answered her right away.
"Yet he speaks and his breath has somehow not been wasted." Dís snapped and then swung her wild eyes to Billa, squeezing all her feelings out through clenched teeth. "His name is Rubekur and he is a problem that I have tried again and again to fix but the council won't. Let. Me. Kill. Him."
The fork in her hand looked to be in real danger of snapping.
Dwalin shook his head over his breakfast plate, a forkful of sausage in the other hand. "I still can't believe that low-born 'ikhlâz dug his way into a council meeting."
"Against my best efforts." Dís huffed. "Dain was just as mystified as the rest of us. You should have seen his face the first time such an ordinary, low-born Dwarrow presumed to be so bold as to call the line of Durin a curse upon all Khazad."
Thorin raised his eyebrows at his sister as several things from several lives flashed through his mind in quick succession.
A flash of gold.
A flash of fire.
"He's not exactly wrong."
"How can you say that, Thorin?"
"How can you not?" he fired back, "You might not have seen me but you saw Sigin'adad. You saw the dragon. You saw the long road to nowhere that we walked for decades. Then there was Moria and you never saw your husband again. The line of Durin might not be a curse but it is a danger. Look at all the harm it's managed to do across two hundred years… to itself and everyone else."
"Thorin…"
It was Billa now with that voice that admonished him but he would speak the truth. She'd held him through too many nightmares to not know it as well herself. Mahal's sake, she was there for the worst of it. She bore the brunt of it on those tiny, Hobbit shoulders. Sometimes he could still see it when he closed his eyes. Her fear… His wife's terrified face hanging hundreds of feet in the air above the base of the mountain and its sharp, waiting rocks. Kicking at the air. Clawing…
The cursed line of Durin had nearly been ended by his own cursed hand.
Then another hand reached out and touched him and the swirling darkness clouding his vision froze in its tracks. The black fingers clenching tighter around his heart released him and he filled his lungs with clean, summer air that smelled so strongly of breakfast.
It took a few more moments for the darkness to clear away completely and even longer for Thorin to realize that his hand was no longer on the table at all. It had been lifted hundreds of feet in the air, miles and miles above his wailing heart and placed gently on his wife's belly. She pressed it against the growing curve and he splayed his fingers out over the old apron that covered it, feeling how warm it was.
Meanwhile Dís took a calming breath, unusual for a ram, though Thorin still saw her fists clenched on top of the table.
"The line of Durín…" she began with a shaky breath, "…Our family is not a curse. And you are our proof. Can you not see that you have been favored?" She sent a meaningful glance to the wife he kept his hand on. "Your faithful stewardship of Mahal's most beloved creations has been rewarded ten-fold."
He could not meet her eyes.
"I lost all right to reward when I lost myself. Second of the line of Durin to fall."
"And the first to rise again." Dís pleaded. "To conquer what our grandfather could not."
Billa squeezed his hand again. A tiny yet emphatic gesture of agreement with his sisters bold words.
Thorin kept on feeling quietly grateful for her as he stared up into her earnest face. She was the only reward he wanted and the one he deserved least of all. With her hair haloed by the sun beaming down from the window above her head, she was also the only thing keeping the lingering darkness at bay. Every time he looked up at Dís, Mahal, every word she spoke made it rise up a little more until he felt it would swallow him again. Apparently all the contented softness of the Hobbits had made his defenses weak, his stone walls turned to mush. He was not adequately prepared to have them stormed like this and he certainly wasn't prepared for the next words she hurled over them.
Dís leaned forward at the able, her sapphire-laden beard nearly brushing across the dirtied breakfast plate in front of her. They twinkled and winked and sparked all the worst memories inside his darkening mind. "Nadad, believe in yourself. You are the King that will see Erebor to greatness again. You are the only one who can build it back like it was before."
Her voice was dripping with tender encouragement and if Thorin looked up he would have seen a brilliant future shining in her eyesm more brightly than the sapphires but he was sinking.
A pain was in his chest as if Azog had just run him through and he was suddenly cold as ice.
His vision went flat and his heart picked up.
Like it was…?
Erebor rose up all around him with its emerald walls and vaulted ceilings. The noisy kitchen chair beneath him was gone and his back ached standing beside his grandfathers throne, watching him smile at every creature that came with their tribute beneath the insidious, rippling, and unnatural light of the arkenstone. They all brought gold. Barrels and boxes of gold. More and more.
Behind him, the mountain was noisy and full. Joyful. Erebor was alive.
Populous and Prosperous.
Like it was.
There was enough gold for everyone. So much gold. Too much. It came up to his knees, his hips, his chest, his chin… it kept rising in waves like an ocean around him and he couldn't catch his breath, couldn't find his grandfather. More gold… More gold… closing in and cutting off his exit. He had to get out. The dragon was coming. The dragon-
"…Thorin!"
That same small hand grabbed his chin and wrenched him bodily from the gold threatening to drown him.
When his eyes refocused, it was on the silver bead swinging before them at the end of a copper-colored braid. They followed slowly it up to that sweet, round face looking at him like he was dying in the snow again.
"Thorin, stop it." she said sharply and like it was not the first time she'd said it. "That's not what she meant at all."
“It’s not?” His voice sounded small and frightened. Full of regret for so many things that had happened so long ago.
“No, my dear. It will never be like that again and that’s exactly why it will be great.” Her thumbs stroked the hollow of his cheeks at the line where his beard began. She chuckled when his eyes slipped closed at the feeling. “Erebor has you to protect it from such things.”
“And who’s going to protect it from me?” Thorin asked her quietly.
"Oh, my darling." Billa sighed and let her head fall forward till it knocked into his, her arms resting against his shoulders.
Thorin realized with a little jolt that she was straddling lap and his hands tightened their grip on her hips. He let her pleasing weight, more substantial and solid than Maisy's, anchor him back to the kitchen floor again.
"Who's going to protect you?" he asked even more quietly, praying that Dís did not hear even while knowing without a doubt that she did.
Then Billa laughed. That silly, surprising little Hobbit laughed in his face. He could smell the stolen bites of breakfast sausage on her breath.
"You, you ridiculous dwarf."
"Billa…" he shook his head against hers.
"That's how this works." she insisted, "You protect me, as you always have, and we will protect you." Then a cheeky little shrug, "The mountain will work itself out."
"Aye!" said Dwalin, grinning ferociously.
"Aye." nodded Dís and Thorin was amazed to see her eyes misted over. "There will be no doubt in the Úzbad." She eyed the Hobbit between them unexpectedly. "Or Ázbad...."
"Rubekur could have all the armies they didn't give you, he will still be no match for us." Dwalin added with satisfaction.
Thorin kept his breathing even and low as his heart slowed again, his eyes happily closed so near to his wife's.
"We needn't waste another thought about him. We'll never see his slimy face again."
"But... we will." Dís replied with an immediate grimace, "The Ázbad still needs to be presented to the council."
"She does not."
"You don't understand, Thorin. They are expecting her, they have been since they found out…She needs to refute the doubt he has cast."
"It's more than that." Dwalin clarified without any trace of his grin.
Thorin rubbed the tip of his nose against Billa's and she hummed in happiness at the touch.
"He already wants me dead, what more could there be?"
Dís groaned and sounded like she'd rather do anything else than tell him.
"Not what." she finally told him. "Who."
Thorin's eyes cracked open and he squinted at her in plain suspicion.
"You're not saying…?"
She nodded desolately. "Since they found out."
Thorin's eyes widened, "Is that why you came here?"
His sister winced. "Not exactly. They found out about her months ago. I came when I found out about this."
Her hand gestured undeniably to Billa's round stomach pressed close and warm against his.
He looked down at the apron covered belly and then up at Billa herself.
There wasn't a trace of fear on her face.
"There has always been doubt." Thorin tried, not looking away from his yasîth and her steady gaze. "We have always handled it well enough."
"Doubts were smaller then and what's more is you were there to dispel them. It's hard to doubt the blood running through the stone when it stands before you."
"Then that's what we'll do."
Billa's clear voice cut through the tension that was as thick as the smell of sausage.
"What will we do?" Dís asked, her interest immediately piqued.
She smiled at her sister-in-law and Thorin saw in it all the courage and wile that got them to the mountain in the first place.
"We will go to the Blue Mountains and we will stand before the council. I will stand before the council and I will leave no room for doubt."
"I'll say." Dwalin's grin was back again.
Billa stuck her tongue out at him and his welcome cheek.
Thorin's lip curled and his hands tightened dangerously at her hips again.
"That is out of the question."