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Chapter Text

He goes to sleep in a lounging chair on the deck of an elven frigate with the lonesome cry of gulls and creaking timbers in his ears.

His sight has been failing for some time and so have his knees, but his hearing is better than it has any right to be. When all is fading away he can still listen, but the gulls seem distant now and indistinct. The hush-shush sound of the tide blends in with the tinkling bells that Elrond’s people have strung up to catch the wind and it all becomes a dull roar.

It reminds Bilbo of when he used to cover his ears as a child to listen to the vibrating tendons in his wrists. It’s that same echoing rumble.

He closes his eyes for a moment (just a moment) to rest them. He’s only ever resting them no matter what Frodo has to say on the matter. He’s never sleeping –until he is.

It’s hard to say how long he naps for, but it must have been a good long while because he awakes feeling better than he has in ages; surrounded by the warm and faintly humid summer air with the thick green scent of mowed grass in his nose… and a pipe in his hand?

Bilbo sits up on the hard bench… and when did he move off his chair? He can’t remember. It’s only, Elrond has set a minder on him -a sweet elvish lass who seems terribly young to be on a gray ship even though her eyes are somehow focused elsewhere, as if she is always looking towards some far off shore- and she is absolute murder about Bilbo leaving his chair to wander about, which is pure foolishness. He only fell the one time! There’s no need for everyone to keep carping on about it.

He shakes his head and squints out onto the de…

The Shire is spread out at Bilbo’s feet like a green duvet that stretches out as far as the eye can see. The air is full of birdsong and the indistinct murmur of a small town; conversation, laughter, and squabbling all blending together into a single cohesive whole.

Bilbo stands on young strong legs without thinking and takes three shaking steps away from the polished flagstone that makes up the front step of Bag End.

There is Farmer Maggot driving a herd of geese to market and there, there is Hamfast Gamgee tramping down Bagshot Row looking like a tween again with a flask of Gamgee rotgut poking out his back pocket. He is surrounded by faces and voices he knows, all of whom should be older and altered. Many of which should be dead.

‘Is this the undying land?’ Bilbo wonders and pinches himself. It feels real. It feels too real. If feels… familiar.

He gropes for his mailbox out of habit more than anything else and ends up scattering letters on the stoop so that he has to kneel down to pick them up. There’s an invitation to little Drogo’s tenth birthday party and a birth announcement for one Primula Brandybuck of Buckland. Bilbo mouth goes dry as he reads through the little stack of correspondence, invitations, and miscellany of life in Hobbiton and can recall every last letter to perfection.

“I…” He looks up and out beyond his front gate to the long and winding road that meanders its way up to his door and on it, still yet a fair distance away, is a tall figure dressed all in gray with a tall pointed hat and enormous bushy eyebrows that Bilbo can see from where he stands. It is a Gandalf in his old travel worn robes without Glamdring at his side or his old irritable mule to pull a cart of fireworks.

A sudden terror takes hold of Bilbo then and he drops his letters in a pile to scramble inside.

Bag End is wrong inside. It’s all wrong! There’s too many doilies and not enough books. His mother’s glory box is pristine and looks like it dwells in a world where no one would dare use it in lieu of a boot scraper for fear of Belladonna Took-Baggins coming back from Beyond to give them a piece of her mind. Frodo’s room is a stiff and fussy little guest room with bits of needlepoint on the walls instead of the little ink prints of leaves and fresh-caught fish that he and Frodo spent their first summer together making. Sting is gone and there are no orc swords stuffed into the bench chest in the hallway.

There is no ring on the mantelpiece nor even the little glass dome it used to sit under.

Bilbo is left standing alone and shaking when a thunderous knock on his front door echoes through the entire hole. The sound is echoing and resounds in his very bones. Bilbo finds himself very nearly moving to answer without his conscious input on the matter.

Gandalf knocks again, more softly this time –more gently.

Bilbo takes a step back then another and then another until he’s almost to the back door. He can’t think, he’s too… he’s too…

He takes his pipe and a fat pouch of tobacco. He takes every handkerchief he can lay his hands on easily. He empties the contents of his little vault into a money pouch and hides it under his shirt. His map case is either gone or doesn’t exist yet along with his good walking stick, his waterproof bedroll, and oilskin hat. All of these will need to be bought either in Bree or the first market he finds. He shucks his yellow brocade vest in favor of the one he uses to garden in and puts on last year’s sturdy green coat, which resists the rain. He packs four suits of clothing, double that amount of unders, half the contents of his medicine chest, and three tins of tea.

There’s no one in the rear garden when he makes his escape and Bilbo is halfway to Buckleberry Ferry before his sanity catches up to him.

It’s coming on nightfall when Bilbo arrives at the Great Smials in Tuckborough, footsore as he hasn’t been in years and aching. His Uncle Fenumbras takes him in for the night, feeds him, and asks remarkably few questions save these:

“Have you a will, young Bilbo?” Fenumbras is roughly the same age as dirt, but Tooks age slowly and with dignity so his hands do not shake when he sits Bilbo down in front of a stationary set. “My advice is to give yourself a space of five years before the Mayor has to get involved. You should also leave those cousins of yours something big enough that they can’t fight to have the will overturned in court without looking like ingrates.”

Bilbo is all of a hundred and thirty-one, but he feels like a tween caught scrumping up an apple tree when his uncle gives him that knowing look. He writes out the will and leaves Lobelia all his silverware plus a small annuity for Otho to compensate for the fact that he’s chosen to leave the rest of his worldly possessions to Drogo with their mutual uncle or whoever else is Thain at the time to act as the executor of his estate and trustee for Drogo if need be.

“Generous enough and, I think, in keeping with what we all know of you.” His uncle nods approvingly and seals it up with his own signature as witness. “So few of my nephews and grandchildren think ahead. Now, I’ve maps for you. They’re a bit old, but the big landmarks and settlements don’t change. Be wary of seeking out any of the smaller communities I have marked out. They’re likely to have died off or moved.”

“I… uncle!” Bilbo squeaks as Fenumbras presses a handsome tube of tooled leather into his hands.

“No point in being restrained now.” The old hobbit chortles at him. “None of your cousins ever came to me before running off into the world for their rambles. I’ve advice and help to give that no one ever looks for. Don’t disappoint me by being the first and then get too embarrassed to accept it. I’ve a waterskin about here somewhere… ah! There it is.” He shoves a battered metal canteen into Bilbo’s lap and follows it up with a little folding skyglass with a tiny compass set into the handle. Fenumbras shoves that into Bilbo’s pocket. “That stays on you at all times along with the maps. Knapsacks can be stolen or lost. You’re never out of luck so long as you can find your way.”

“Y-yes, sir.” Bilbo fumbles the glass into his pocket and makes a mental note to buy a chain so that he can string it round his neck for added security.

Fenumbras loads him down with a folding wallet full of needles and little fish hooks, a folding knife, and a cache of sturdy twine. He quizzes Bilbo about how much money he has then loans him more, nods over Bilbo’s money belt with approval, and gives him two recipes for common salves that can be made from very little in a pinch.

“Now, where exactly are you going, young Baggins?” He asks at last. “And why are you going there?”

“To the west.” Bilbo says, not wishing to reveal too much. “There’s something there that I must look for.”

“I see.” Fenumbras puffs on his pipe and frowns. “You sounds like you hope it’s not there.”

“If providence is kind…” Bilbo sighs. “Then it won’t be.”

“Hmmm. I see.” He takes another puff. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Bilbo.” He harrumphs.

“Sorry to disappoint you, uncle, but I can guarantee to you that I don’t.” Bilbo sighs and drops his face into his hands.

“Well.” Fenumbras turns to the window and nods. “I’m glad to hear that. Most of your cousins don’t figure that lesson out until the adventure is over. I’ve better hopes now of you coming back from this ramble alive.”

Funny. Bilbo doesn’t share his optimism.

Fenumbras kicks him out of bed well before dawn and drags him to the early market in Tuckborough where he’s at least able to buy a decent hat and a voluminous rain slicker. Fenumbras gives him a bedroll that’s made of oilskin on the outside and lambswool on the inside along with two good blankets that roll up thin. Then the miserable old fart takes him to buy a pony.

“What do you mean you’ve sold out?”

Edinraf Proudfoot shrugs and taps his pipe out using his heel as Fenumbras blusters at him. “Dwarf came through. Big ‘un with twin axes long as I am tall.” Sounds like Dwalin. “Bought the lot. I’m just holding them until he comes to collect later.” He holds up a hand when Fenumbras goes for his wallet. “Sorry, Fen. Not even if you make a better offer. T’was made clear what would happen if I tried to sell one out from under him. I’ve a hinnie left though, if you’re interested. Sturdy little beast and sweet tempered too. Will walk all day if she only smells oats on occasion. For you, I’ll sell her for a sovereign and a cask of that wine your brother makes.”

The hinnie is named Apple and makes for a less intimidating travelling companion than one of Edrinraf’s ponies, which usually sell to Big Folk and dwarves apparently. For one, Bilbo can mount her without help or use of a block and she’s a placid incurious sort of beast who barely flicks an ear at the worst noise that the dawn market has to offer. Frankly, she’s a bit dull but dull is desirable in a Hobbit’s mount.

Bilbo is well out of town by the time a familiar figure in a tattered gray robe makes his way up to the Great Smials and perhaps that is for the best…for now.

Gandalf arrives last to the Green Dragon, which would be an embarrassment if he were anyone other than who he is. Fortunately he is himself and thus quite immune to the annoyed glare he receives from the Inn’s barkeep (a Boffin, unless Gandalf’s missed his guess) when he orders a human-sized glass of wine and the matching one he gets from Thorin Oakenshield as he sits down –more specifically when he sits down alone.

“I was given to believe that you were fetching our burglar.” He says as he sets down his wooden spoon next to the bowl of stew before him. The others are quiet all around him, which is an effect that only Thorin seems to be able to inspire in them. They look at him out the corner of their eyes and perhaps to these lost and lonely vagabonds, he represents something more than merely himself.

“I’m afraid I missed him.” Gandalf apologizes. “He has business in the west, but I think we will catch him on the road. Our goals are similar after all. Until then, I will make the fourteenth member of your company. Balin need not fear.”

“Your burglar seems like a busy sort.” Thorin snorts.

“He is.” Gandalf agrees and it’s not particularly a lie. The Bilbo Baggins he remembers was always going somewhere, doing something, even when kept firmly at his mother’s knee his eyes would be roaming for something to do. “You asked me to find you the best.”

“I did.” Thorin turns to his men. “What say you? Do we continue on and hope to find the wizard’s pet thief or do we try our luck in Bree?”

“Hiring a thief in Bree will get you exactly that, although I doubt anyone you bought there would wait until the end of the journey to get their payday.” Gandalf points out mildly. “You require a specific individual and there is only one such in these parts. Hire another if you like, but if you do then you’ll go without my aide. Bilbo Baggins is the thief you seek and I will work with no other.”

The barkeep slams down Gandalf’s wine just then and points a finger at him. “I’ll not have any talk like that in my inn.” He blusters. “Your dwarves have already emptied out my larders, which should have lasted me the week! Baggins is a respected name in these parts and you’ll keep your slander to yourself or find another place to bed down for the night. Thief indeed!” He grumbles as he marches off.

“What sort of thief isn’t even known for his craft?” Thorin cocks a mocking eyebrow at Gandalf.

“A very good one.” Gandalf replies tartly and leans to one side to dodge the damp cloth the barkeep flings at his head.

Chapter Text

Bilbo’s body is still soft and complains about too much time spent walking or in the saddle, but he still remembers how to make a smokeless fire and how to shield the light from the predators in the night. He remembers how to catch and keep worms in a pouch for bait. He remembers the fastest way to catch a fish and how to set a rabbit snare before bed so his stomach, at least, is the only part of him that does not suffer. That is a boon, considering that the supplies in his saddlebags consist mainly of cram and a few bags of nuts.  

Travel is something Bilbo has learned to appreciate over the years, but his last great adventure cured him of any wish to go about such a thing alone. Apple is fine company -make no mistake- but her conversation leaves something to be desired.

He misses Frodo with an unexpected keenness that bites into his very soul. The lad hasn’t even been born yet and if Bilbo has the chance then he’ll probably never pass into the care of anyone other than his real parents, but he misses the boy’s uncomplicated company. His constant nature is not one you’ll find the equal of easily.

Bilbo thinks he’d like to live in a world where the son of his heart could be free to live, love, and grow old in the Shire he loved so with no need of boarding the elven ships at Gray Haven.

As wishes go, it’s not the worst Bilbo has ever had.

He misses his dwarves as well, but it’s an old ache that Bilbo is accustomed to. He’s missed them for nearly eighty years. What another lifetime?

Still, it isn’t easy knowing that his company is out there somewhere singing to one another half in and half out in their own secret language. Somewhere out there Bombur will be cooking a stew. Fili will be noodling about on his pipes. Bofur will be whittling away at something –a toy soldier perhaps or a dancer. Nori will be watching; always, always watching for when something inevitably goes wrong.

Thorin will be thinking too much. He always thinks too much.

‘Enough of that, Mister Baggins.’ Bilbo advises himself. That way lay only madness and perhaps he needed to ration his sanity.

He looks up at the darkening sky and a drop of rain hits his cheek. It’s followed by another and then another. Before long Bilbo finds himself in the kind of sudden torrent that likes to turn good earth to treacherous mud. Blast. Better find shelter to wait it out.

There’s a nice little copse of trees overlooking a bluff where Bilbo is able to set up an acceptable shelter. The ground is high so he’s in no danger of waking up in a puddle and the trees allow him to string up his oilskin overhead. He eats jerky and cram rather than trying to start a fire and naps against a nicely sloped stone while Apple enjoys her nose bag.

He wakes after dark to the shriek of a rabbit dying somewhere out there. He scowls and rubs at his eyes with the heel of one hand as he sits up. Bloody owls. Couldn’t it have snatched a nice quiet field mouse instead?

His back smarts from having been leaning up against that bloody boulder and he rolls onto his stomach, intent on rolling out his bedroll for a proper sleep when he registers light coming up from lower down onto the cliff face. When he peers over the edge of the bluff, he sees an all too familiar sight –thirteen familiar sights, to be precise.

Kili and Fili are by the fire, using the rabbit’s death scream to wind up Ori about a potential orc raid and Bilbo has to cover his mouth to stop from chuckling. He’d wondered who would end up bearing the brunt of those two prankster’s boredom in his absence and he mouths a silent apology to the little scribe.

‘Don’t let them get to you.’ He tells the young dwarf silently. ‘One day you will be a legend in your own right. You’ll walk with Kings and heroes and write down all their embarassing secrets.’  

Bilbo is about settle down with his chin on the ridge of the cliff and his face hidden by the grass line for a good listen when Thorin breaks up the conversation with a snarl.

“You think that funny?” He looms over his nephews like a specter himself and the smiles fade from their faces. “Do you think a night raid by orcs is a joke?”

“N-no, sir.” Fili gulps and Kili drops his gaze. “We didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No.” Thorin agrees and turns his back on the boys. “You didn’t. You know nothing of the world.” He mutters that last as he stalks out of the little circle of firelight and away onto the edge of the little outcropping that made up the dwarves’ campsite.

Bilbo frowns. He doesn’t… that isn’t a conversation he recalls. Was he asleep for it? Or do they feel more comfortable talking about emotionally charged subjects without the presence of a foreigner. He listens with half an ear as Balin tells the assembled company a condensed version of the Battle of Dimril Dale, which differs greatly from the accounts Bilbo read in his history books.

They were there, he realizes as he never quite did before. His dwarves. They were on that historic battlefield and are part of the reason why it’s possible for travelers to cross through the Misty Mountains without undue fear of orcs in Mount Gundabad.

‘I never knew.’ Bilbo thinks sadly and wonders what other things there are that he missed.

“…and that is when I saw him.” Balin chortles a little at the memory; eyes soft and still sad at the same time as he speaks. “A young dwarf prince, facing down the pale orc. He stood alone against this terrible foe; his armor was gone save an oak branch to use as a shield.” He bares his teeth in a grim smile. “Azog the Defiler learned that day that the line of Durin would not be so easily broken."

This is new.

Bilbo creeps forward an inch, intrigued despite knowing better. The Thorin he knew did not talk much about himself. He spoke, good heavens yes, but not about his past. His words were always reserved for the fate of his people and old glory.

"Our forces rallied around him. We drove the orcs back.” Balin is a gifted storyteller. That much is clear as every dwarf around the fire (including a Hobbit some distance above it) hang on his every word. “Our enemy had been defeated. But there was no feast nor song that night for our dead were beyond the count of grief. We few had survived. And I thought to myself then: ‘There is one who I could follow. There is one I can call king’."

Thorin returns then having cleared his head and draws up short at the edge of the firelight. He looks to his men who look back at him with hope in their faces; hope and belief. Then he dips his head in a silent acknowledgement and takes his place by the fire as if nothing had happened.

“...but what of Azog?” Ori asks, clever little Ori. “What became of him?”

‘Dead at the hand of Dain, son of Nain. His son, Bolg, yet lives and remembers the dwarves who killed his father only too well.’ Bilbo wants to say with bitterness on his tongue because isn’t that the way of it? Yesterday’s troubles give birth to today’s. It never truly ends, not really.

Only…

“That creature died of his wounds long ago.” Thorin bites the words out and stares into the fire. Perhaps he sees a face there looking back at him.

Bilbo’s fingers tense on the damp earth under him. Why did he say that? Surely he knows. That isn’t what happened! It didn’t go that way.

‘I don’t like this.’ Bilbo thinks and creeps backwards, inching away from that most disturbing of scenes. ‘I don’t like this at all.’

He rolls up his bedding and saddles Apple as quietly as he can. Thank Eru that the ground is soft and the grass is damp enough to muffle the stamp of her hooves. Bilbo guides her down the dark side of the hill, well out of the dwarves’ range.

Bilbo escapes into the darkness, but there’s a prickling in-between his shoulder blades that he does not like. It feels too much like being watched and when he turns to look back he sees a tall figure in pale gray standing on the bluff where his campsite was not twenty minutes prior.

‘Oh, Gandalf.’ He thinks and considers turning back.

It would be easy and the journey would be so much sweeter with the sound of other voices. He has questions now that he never thought to ask before and conversations he would conduct differently.

‘That’s how it starts, Mister Baggins.’ A cold voice in the back of his mind harrumphs. It sounds remarkably like Uncle Fenumbras. ‘Just-this-once will always become just-this-twice. What will you do later when it is time to part? Say “Sorry, but you’re on your own. I have pressing business to the south”? You know what you have to do so do it.’

“Good bye, old friend.” He murmurs into the night air. Gandalf is a wizard. Perhaps he’ll hear. Perhaps he’ll understand. “I’m sorry. It’s best this way.”

The company will be safe. Gandalf won’t let any harm befall them, Bilbo knows. Perhaps he’ll have to go about it differently this time, but the one thing that Bilbo knows about Gandalf is that the Gray Wizard has never accustomed himself to failure.

Hopefully he won’t start now.

The dwarves pay the wizard little mind as he slips back in amongst them. They’ve become accustomed to his comings and goings, but Thorin keeps an eye on him all the same. Balin does as well, he thinks, and Dwalin. They, like Thorin, were born and raised within the confines of Erebor as part of the warrior caste.

Dwarves and halflings don’t have much in common save an automatic distrust of anyone taller than themselves. The young ones (Ori, Kili, and even Fili) have been socialized past it by necessity, but Thorin has never quite been able to unwind in the towns of Men even though he was very young when he left the mountain. The wizard’s presence among his people is just enough to put him on edge and keep him there.

“Where did you get the oilskin?” Bofur asks, pointing the bit of his pipe at a length of dark brown leather folded and draped over Gandalf’s arm. It looks a bit like it might be a child’s rain poncho.

“It was left behind at an abandoned campsite up there.” Gandalf glances up at the bluff overhead.

“Looks hobbit sized.” Bofur tilts his head, gauging it for size. “Perhaps it belongs to your burglar. Must have left in a hurry.”

“Yes. I had considered that possibility.” Gandalf replies as he folds the garment up and stows it in his pouch. “It’s a shame if so. The camp looked relatively fresh. We must have just missed him by minutes.”

“Doubt that.” Bofur says. “Nori’s on watch tonight and his eyes don’t miss much. Anything moves out there tonight? You can bet he’ll have seen it.”

“Not this hobbit, I think.” Gandalf settles himself against the rock face and pulls out his long pipe. “Nor any Hobbit at all who did not wish to be seen. Shirefolk have their own magic and they use it to stay hidden when dangerous folk are about.”

“Is your hobbit a coward then?” Thorin asks. He looks over his people. They are hardly intimidating, even though he pities whoever is foolish enough to underestimate them. “That a party of dwarves will send him fleeing into the night?”

“Thirteen dwarves all heavily armed and telling stories of war in a region known to be plagued by bandits against a single hobbit?” A tiny well of light appears in the bowl of the wizard’s pipe as it lights itself using nothing but his breath. “I can’t imagine what would be frightening about those odds. Seems to show more good sense than bad to me.”

“You need not continue selling me on your Hobbit, Wizard.” Thorin reaches into his pocket and feels the shape of his grandfather’s key cut into his palm. He knows why they need the hobbit. Smaug will know the scent of men and dwarves. Only a creature of a sort that he’s never encountered will have a chance to get close enough to the old lizard to find a weak spot for Thorin and his men to exploit. They’ve no hope of winning against a dragon in face-to-face combat. His people have already learned that lesson and paid the cost of it in blood.

“Is that what I was doing?” Gandalf asks. “Gracious me. I had no idea. Well, never mind. We’ll probably encounter him on the road tomorrow. You’ll feel more settled once the company is complete, I think.”

Thorin snorts and turns away to seek his bed, but there is no rest to be found for him. Not while the dragon still lives and not while his people live on scraps and in ghettos across Middle Earth.

‘I will do whatever is necessary including placing my trust in a wizard.’ He promises himself. ‘Including trusting a thief, if it comes to that.’

What other options has he?

Chapter Text

Uncle Fenumbras’ maps don’t show many settlements between the Last Bridge and the Elven territory surrounding Rivendell, but there’s one and it wouldn’t add any time onto Bilbo’s journey. He could skip past it. It’s one of the ones Fenumbras marked with a little red circle so it may not even be there anymore, but Bilbo wants to stock up on feed for Apple and possibly buy something to eat that isn’t dry cram or sour little river perch.

Unfortunately the town’s been abandoned for a while and the only thing left behind are bare frames of what used to be houses dotted here and there among overgrown fields like the sun-bleached bones of dead animals. Some of the vegetable patches look a little less overwhelmed than the others so perhaps the inhabitants didn’t leave all at once.

He pulls some woody carrots and late yams for his supper. He ponders the merits of looting around to see if anyone left behind grain, but anything he found would undoubtedly be harboring mildew spores. Apple would do better on grass than tainted feed.

Bilbo walks Apple out to the outskirts of the ghost town… and promptly revises his opinion from ‘the villagers didn’t leave all at once’ to ‘some of the villagers may not have left at all’.

There’s perhaps one corner of the farm house still standing and it’s partially propped up by a naked chimney stack. Grass and creeping vine have started to overtake the remains of the structure, but the exposed wood hasn’t had time to fade in the sunlight. It looks overgrown, but the vines are all new and there’s no evidence of dead growth from years gone by. Parts of the bare frame are still blackened by fire damage, but not enough to have destroyed the entire building. It’s almost as if…

“…almost as if the house was ripped apart from the outside.” Bilbo finishes his thought out loud as he kicks aside some debris to expose a child’s doll whose dress is still checkered in bright red and blue. It’s a crude little ragdoll made of woven hemp, which decomposes so quickly that it couldn’t possibly last more than a single season out of doors.

He darts outside to squint at the shape of the mountains way off in the distance. According to his map he shouldn’t be anywhere near that blasted troll cave, but the shape of the Misty Mountains on the horizon over the beech trees and towering pines surrounding this lost farm tell a different story.

“We must have come at it from a different angle before.” He mutters, but cannot be certain. Thorin was responsible for navigating the party through the Bruinen Gorges and the High Moor. Bilbo’s speculated about the route they took that ended up in Rivendell, but was never able to reproduce it again exactly.

He’s not one to speak ill of the dead, but Bilbo suspects that they may have spent a considerable about of time wandering around the Trollshaws in circles. Thorin was –or rather is a capable statesman and warrior, but when it comes to directions he can’t find his way out of a room with only one door yet persists in trying.

“Let’s find a safe place to camp for the night, girl.” He says to Apple, whose indifference to his conversation cannot possibly be overstated. She’s more interested in the verdant grass at their feet than she is in him, but is a good sport about moving on from it. “The dwarves should be fine, especially they have no burglar around to bully into pickpocketing a troll.”

Still…

His little dagger is out there gathering dust and bat droppings in a trellwarren along with two very valuable and ancient swords. There are few things in the world that Bilbo has been deeply attached, but Sting was one a handful of belongings that Bilbo clung to even after the Shire ceased to be able to cling to him. That he was able to give it up to Frodo can only be considered a measure of how much love he has for the boy and how much he feared the danger that his nephew (his son) would surely be sent into.

Bilbo chews over the quandary as he settles Apple in the lee of a large outcropping of stone. He unsaddles her and takes his time with the curry brushes. Fortunately he doesn’t need to tether or hobble her like he might a pony trained by Big Folk. Shire beasts are trained to the spoken word since very few of them will ever be (ugh!) ridden. Once Bilbo has bid her to stay, Apple won’t stray far from that spot. She might move around a bit to find superior grazing or an acceptable tree to nap under, but she won’t bolt unless something threatens her.

The sun is setting when Bilbo finds the trolls’ cave. He hides himself up a tree as they crawl out and go about their nightly business, which seems to involve a great deal of carping at one another while one of their number prepares a watery-looking mutton soup.

Getting into the cave isn’t hard. The trolls are about as aware as brace of tree stumps, but it is unpleasant. The walls and floors are covered in a malodorous sticky resin that looks like something you’d find on a person’s insides, but remains a glossy dull red. It’s pulled up in spikes that remind Bilbo of ribcages. The cache is in the rear of the cave, just beyond the squashed patches of bloodstained hay the trolls use for bedding and he finds Sting half-buried in the dirt.

He slides the blade home into his belt with a sigh of relief. Having it back makes him feel complete in ways he hasn’t been for years. He pockets some of the loose coin and jewelry laying around just in case. Uncle Fen lent him a goodly amount of coin, but it’s a long way to the final destination and he’ll have to stock up on a great deal of supplies before he enters Mordor. There will be no hunting there.

One of the trolls clomps past just as Bilbo creeps up to the mouth of the cave. It doesn’t see him. Its attention is reserved for (Oh, Eru have mercy) the two shaggy little Shire ponies it’s carrying, one under each arm.

No guesses as to whom the ponies belong.

“You must be joking.” Bilbo mutters at an uncaring sky. He doesn’t get a response, not that he expected one, but apparently if the dwarves will not go to the trolls then then trolls will go to the dwarves.

He trails the monster to the cook fire it shares with its brothers. Sure enough there are two more ponies in a little pen at the back of the trolls’ shady cul-de-sac. Blast, blast, and triple blast.

“What do I do now?” Bilbo groans as he creeps along the top of the mossy stones that shield the trolls’ camp site from the eastern sky.

“Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey if it doesn’t look like mutton again tomorrer!” One of the trolls mutters around a thick sheep’s leg with the wool all burnt off it.

“Never a bit of manflesh have we had for long enough!” Another agrees in a high flanging whine even though it seems as though there’s plenty to eat and beer to go with it. “What the ‘ell was William a-thinkin’ of to bring us into these parts at all, beats me –an’ the drink’s running short, what’s more!” He reaches out to joggle the elbow of the biggest and probably oldest troll as he –William, presumably- takes a pull on his jug.

That devolves into a scuffle and Bilbo rolls his eyes as he scouts around a bit. Luckily for him, the dead-end isn’t quite as dead as he first thought it to be and is formed by two great stones jutting up from the ground, but they don’t meet perfectly. There’s a bit of a gap where they come together that is all over grown with bracken and leaves that part easily under Sting’s edge. The path, once cleared, is just large enough to let a pony pass through.

‘Perhaps if I get the ponies out fast enough then no one will go looking for them and find the trolls instead.’ Bilbo thinks with what he will later admit to being foolish optimism. When he returns to the campsite there’s a little shadow creeping up behind one of the trolls and… oh no… eying its pocket.

Kili makes a strangled noise when Bilbo comes up behind him and clamps a hand over his mouth, but it’s drowned out by a round of explosive sneezing from the troll he’d been about to rob. Bilbo drags him backwards and they scuttle out of reach just in to for Kili to avoid getting grabbed in lieu of the stained bed sheet that troll’s been using as a pocket hanky.

“Be silent!” Bilbo hisses as he hauls Kili back into the safety of the shadows. “What were you thinking!? Troll purses are mischief. They sound an alarm when taken, you little fool.” Bilbo chooses not to mention how exactly he came to learn that, but the message seems to sink in.

“Who are you?” The dwarf whispers. “And who are you calling little?”

“I’m a friend, but I’ll be gone if you keep yawping like that.” Bilbo makes a gesture for silence. He points to the ponies. “Yours?”

Kili nods and follows Bilbo to the little bolt hole he cut earlier. The dwarf nods his understanding as Bilbo points to him and then through to the outside. Then he points to his blade and the pony enclosure.

Cutting them free is the easy part. Bilbo clicks his fingers together in front of one mare’s eyes, gives her the signal to walk in a straight line, and prays that she’s been trained for farming commands. Luck is with him and it turns out that Dwalin purchased a lot of ponies that had been both broken to saddle and trained to work in the fields of the Shire. The pony walks and the others follow one at a time as Bilbo releases them. He lets his breath out as the last one goes and is just about to slip out after it when one the trolls lunges out into the darkness and comes up with a squirming and wriggling… Fili.

“I thought I heard something in the grass!” It crows and holds up his prize to show his brothers. Fili bleats out something that sounds like a garbled owl’s hoot that pins his captor’s ears back. “Blimey, Bert, look what I’ve copped! What is it?”

“Tha’s a dwarf that is, though I never heard a dwarf make that noise before.” The one called Bert declared. “Stringy looking sort and probably tough too. Think he’d be enough for a stew, Bill?”

“We haven’t time to make a stew before dawn and besides, one dwarf wouldn’t make two mouthfuls once he’s been skinned an’ boned.” The third troll turns Fili around to face him. “Ere, now, you. There any more of your kind out there tonight?”

“He weren’t askin’ you, Tom.” William growls pulling Fili away.

“It’s just me!” Fili squeaks. “All on my own and no one with me. Don’t cook me, sirs. I’m sour! I’ve been sick, you see. I’d make terrible eating.”

“Augh, poor little blighter.” William sniffs, sounding a bit drunk which isn’t outside the realm of possibility given the size of the jug he’d been using for a tankard. “Poor little blighter. Let ‘im go!”

“No!” Bert says. “I’m tired of mutton and he’s probably lying. I don’t fancy waking up with my throat cut! Hold his toes in the fire and we’ll have the truth out of him.”

“I won’t have it!” William cuffs Bert upside the head. “I caught him anyway. It’s my say!”

“You’re a fat fool!” Says Bert. “As I’ve said afore this evening!”

“And you’re a lout.” William counters.

“I won’t take that from you, Bill Huggins!” Bert launches himself at William and there’s a spectacular row. Fili’s thrown free as Tom launches himself into the fray and Bilbo drags him back to the escape hole.

“Mahal’s beard!” Fili swears. “What are you?”

“Done with rescuing dwarves this evening. Thank you for asking.” Bilbo grumbles. “Here’s a way out. Get your people hence before the trolls realize you’ve escaped and go hunting for you. I got your brother and his ponies out before you were caught.”

“Kili!” Fili swears. “He’ll have heard me call for help and gone to fetch our uncle.”

…which is indeed what happened, Bilbo realizes as a horde of dwarves charge into the cul-de-sac and distract the trolls from their row. Fili bursts to his feet with a growl and throws himself into the battle while Bilbo hurriedly backs away. Gandalf is nowhere to be seen and the Trolls behind lays about themselves with clubs made of tree trucks and great big burlap sacks that they shove any hapless dwarves they capture into.

Thorin and Dwalin last the longest fighting back-to-back, but three trolls against two dwarves is not a fair fight no matter how fierce or well-armed the dwarves are. Bilbo makes a face as they too go into sack. Dwalin goes first with blood sheeting down his upper lip from a bloody nose and Thorin sometime later. He pulls a branch from the fire and uses it to keep his foes at bay for a little while, but Tom gets the drop on him and finally he too ends up in a sack.

Bilbo retreats and clambers up onto the one of the big slanted boulders to get a good look at what’s happening, but there’s little good news to be had. The trolls are squabbling over how to cook their catch, but when Bilbo checks he finds the eastern sky is beginning to lighten in shades of pink and violet as the sun crests over the horizon and light spills across the landscape.

“So, we’re playing for time again.” He sighs.

There’s no sign of Gandalf at all, but that’s not unexpected. Bilbo hovers in the darkness as the trolls continue to bicker.

“There’s no time for roastin’ em, Bert.” William snarls. “Besides, roasting will only make them tough. Make a pie of ‘em, sez I!”

“And makin’ a crust is so much quicker?” Bert pokes Bombur in his considerable belly. “This one feels plenty soft to me. There’s no need of bakin’ him up. He’ll roast up a treat, all crackling fat and crispy skin!”

Bilbo bites his lip and prays for Gandalf to appear quickly. The sun is rising steadily, but the stones make for an excellent shelter for the trolls. The light would have to get fairly strong before it began to penetrate their little grotto.

“We’ve et roasted meat every night for a fortnight on yer say-so, Bert. Give someone else a turn.” Tom hauls a huge cauldron probably originally meant for doing laundry out of their cave. “We’ll make a proper stew, is what we’ll do.”

“Stew is slow too, y’gurt big fool!” William grumbled. “At least a pie would keep for a few nights!”

“Roasted!” Bert insists. “Or raw if you’re such a blinkin’ hurry.” He snatches up Ori, who is the smallest and lightest. “See? They’s perfectly edible as they are…” He opens his mouth wide and lowers the little dwarf down… down… down…

“Oh, I say!” Bilbo spits out without thinking and immediately flattens himself to the ground when Bert freezes and drops Ori onto his brothers.

“OO’S THERE!” Bert bellows. “More dwarves?!”

‘I might as well be hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb.’ Bilbo tells himself and hurries away from where he first cried out to say, “Not at all.”

“Then what manner o’creature are ye?” William grumbles, looking about with ill-ease. “We ain’t sharin’ our supper, if that’s what yer here for.”

“Oh, I ate well enough today.” Bilbo says, moving yet again. “It’s true, I came here looking to catch a dwarf or two for my Stenday meal, but you seem to have caught them all. That’s fine with me. I’m an honorable sort of monster. I won’t steal from your pantry. Only…” he pauses. “I was always taught to never eat a dwarf the same day you catch him.”

“I never heard that!” Bert crosses his arms over his big barrel chest. “Tha’s a load of rubbish that is!”

“Tisn’t!” Bilbo replies silkily. “I had it from my father and he from his. Dwarves eat terrible things… such terrible things, I couldn’t even tell you. One must wait for it all to pass through them otherwise you eat it as well!”

“What sort of things?” William asks and pokes at Dwalin skeptically.

“I shudder to think about it, but if you insist…” Bilbo pauses for effect. “Vegetables. Loads of them and fruit too! They haven’t even the manners to let it start to mold first! They eat it all fresh.”

“Augh!” William leaps away from the dwarves while Bert and Tom make gagging and retching noises. “What’s wrong with ye?” He moans at Dwalin who snarls back at him. “Tha’s disgusting.”

“You see?” Bilbo says. “I told you. It’s all very distressing and I shan’t even mention the parasites they host in their stomachs. Makes me faint even to think of it.”

“Blimey!” The trolls surge further back from their catch and peer all around themselves with beady eyes. “We can’t jest let ‘em go!” Williams says. “How d’you do it?”

“Well, they’re hardy creatures.” Bilbo replies in a considering tone. “They have to be, all things considered. They can survive a week without food so I pen mine up for a few days and let them have only water. Then they are nicely weak and clean inside when I am ready to eat them. It’s all very logical, I think you’ll agree.”

“I don’t agree with no beast that won’t show its face.” Bert says as he turns around, trying to catch sight of Bilbo. “Yer just trying to fool us into leaving our dwarves where you can get at ‘em!”

“Hardly.” Bilbo sniffs. “I would show you my face, dear sirs, but I am quite ugly and firelight is harmful to me. There is plenty of mutton about and I do not tire of the same food easily. What you do with your own supper is hardly my affair. I thought only of your comfort.”

“Lookit what ye’ve done now, Bert!” William clouts him upside the head. “We ain’t had proper neighbors since we left the mountains. Now we get one and you go and insult it! Apologize nice an’ proper or I’ll give ye a beating!”

“I ain’t apologizing!” Bert hip-checks his brother. “This’ll be them orcs all over again! ‘Ow much of our pickin’s did you let them lizard skins run off with over the years, eh? Eh!”

The sun is getting high, but not high enough to pierce the campsite. Bilbo wracks his brains for a way to prolong William and Bert’s fight until he spots a gray shape dart through the undergrowth. Gandalf! Finally!

“Say that again to me face, Bert!” William snarls as he advances on Bert.

“Dawn take you!” Gandalf surges up out of the shelter of the tangled growth atop the stone shielding the trolls from their one true foe. He brings his staff up and slams the butt down onto it. The boulder cracks in two, flooding the area with pure brilliant sunlight. “And be stone to you!”

“NO!” William moans, but isn’t able to do much else as his body and those of his brothers stiffen and seize into rough crumbly stone.

Bilbo retreats out of sight as Gandalf descends upon his hapless comrades and begins to free them. He breathes out slowly –happily- as he watches them all emerge whole from bondage and mostly unscathed. Ori looks a bit shaky, but none the worse for wear. Dwalin’s nose needs to be set, he thinks, but it’s so crooked that this can’t possibly be the first time he’s broken it. Best of all, there are Fili and Kili pounding each other’s backs, just so happy that the other is safe.

‘I should go.’ The thought cuts through him like a knife.

Now would be the time. In a moment someone is going to remember the mysterious ‘monster’ that was talking to the trolls or one of the boys will remember the strange halfling who called them both names.

He creeps backwards out of the grotto and down into the bracken lining the forest floor. He can still hear the voices of his dwarves in the distance. They’re cheerful and riding the tide of euphoria that comes in the wake of surviving a bad night. Hopefully soon someone will remember that trolls tend to keep little hordes of their own.

Orcrist and Glamdring deserve better than to waste away in a trellwarren.

His spirits are starting to lift just a little when a hand comes down from on high and seizes him by the collar. Gandalf plucks him off the ground the way Bilbo might scruff a kitten and with much the same attitude.

“There you are.” He says with a wide smile. “Bilbo Baggins. I’ve been looking for you.”

Chapter Text

The wizard re-appears as suddenly as he vanished, but when he returns he has a… a halfling with him with one hand clasped on the unfortunate’s shoulder in an iron grip.

“It seems Gandalf’s finally caught his burglar at last!” is Balin’s soft-voiced observation to Thorin as the wizard drags the little creature into their midst.

“Gentlemen, may I introduce my friend to you.” Gandalf pushes the Halfling forward and the momentum carries him for several steps. “This is Mister Bilbo Baggins, late of Bag End and a most excellent Hobbit whose family I am well acquainted with.”

He’s a neat enough little fellow, if somewhat soft around the middle for his supposed profession. Like most of his kind he keeps his hair cropped short in a frizzy cap of dark gold curls that cling damply to his forehead and draggle into a pair of keen brown eyes.

Thorin looks him up and looks him down. At the very least he’s not dressed in typical Shire fashion. Hobbit fashion tends to favor brilliant (and expensive) colors such as saffron and indigo, which is fine for an affluent farmer who will never travel more than fifty miles from his home but less desirable in someone who Thorin may have to trust with his peoples’ lives and very future. By comparison, Baggins’ drab brown coat and faded green waistcoat with its scuffed wooden toggles seems positively mundane.

Still, he has no armor about him and no weapons save a long wicked-looking dagger thrust underneath his coat. Then again, perhaps a burglar would have less need of armor. Their profession is hardly about seeking conflict.

“Is this your burglar? Well, I suppose he looks the part.” Thorin allows with a nod of grudging approval.

Baggins favors him with a scowl that might look intimidating on someone half again his size, but makes him look like middle-aged cherub with gas. That face must be invaluable to a professional thief. Thorin is feeling better about this already.

Finally. Something has gone right for a change.

“I said that you look like a thief, thief.” Thorin repeats himself. “…which is what I’ve been assured that you are so you needn’t take it personally.”

“Hullo.” Fili comes wandering over from where he’s been tasked with tending to the wounds of those who bore the brunt of the trolls’ assault on their company. He leans past Thorin’s shoulder to get a look at the newcomer and an unexpected smile breaks out across his face. “Ki, come look. It’s that Halfling!”

“Is it now?” Kili calls back to him. “Well, I owe him a beer for my life and a thumping for calling me names.”

Thorin eyes his nephews. “Explain.” He says flatly. “For that matter, perhaps you care to enlighten me as to what you were doing inside the troll camp to begin with? Why did neither of you report back?”

Fili colors a bit as he remembers just whose presence he’s standing it and he drops his gaze. “I, ah. Well, Kili noticed we were missing a pony or two with no sign of where they went. The rest of the herd was still in place so we thought they’d just slipped their hobbles and wandered off. Only it turned out that the trolls had them. Kili crept into the camp to cut them free and he had a narrow miss with one of the trolls, but while he was in there I must have snapped a twig underfoot and the trolls caught me. That’s when I sounded the alarm only the trolls got into a fight over me and I was thrown out of it. Master Gandalf’s hobbit there got me out of the way.”

Thorin turns to Kili who looks a bit like he wants to dig a hole, crawl into it, and pull the turf over his head. “And you? Where were you when this happened?”

“I… had a narrow miss in the camp and Mister Boggins pulled me out of danger.” Kili explains slowly and no doubt glossing over many pertinent (and potentially incriminating) details. “He showed me a tunnel out of the camp then he cut the ponies free and sent them through to me… only he never came out and I heard Fili hoot for backup , which is when I went for help.” He spreads his hands.

“Hmmm.” Thorin resigns himself to probably never knowing exactly what it was that his nephews got up to in his absence. He turns to the hobbit, whose gaze does not drop. He stares like Thorin’s a puzzle that needs solving and is potentially missing some pieces. “And you, thief? What were you doing in a troll camp in the dead of night.”

“Rescuing your dwarves, it seems like.” The hobbit replies in a very familiar voice.

Thorin straightens and advances a step without meaning to or realizing that he had until Balin’s hand clamps down on his shoulder. He looks down at his hands and sees them clenched on empty air. He forces them open and looks at the hobbit again. “You.” He says. “You were that thing in the shadows telling the trolls how to eat us!”

“Buying time more like.” The hobbit replies, hooking his thumbs into his bracers. “The sun was rising. All I needed them to do was have another fight. They seemed prone to it anyway and it’s not like I could take them in a fight when your lot failed to.”

Thorin exhales slowly, trying to vent some of his ire. ‘This serves no purpose.’ He tells himself and wills it to be true, but the thief –the Wizard’s Halfling- accused his company of being unclean. Thorin has killed men for lesser insults. “Eat dwarves often, do you?” He growls. “You seemed a knowledgeable source.”

“Ah…?” Baggins blinks at him and the age eases away from his face as his features go lax in confusion. Suddenly he looks half his own age. “I’m afraid I was lying, good sir.” He says slowly. “I’m not much given to eating anything I could potentially hold a conversation with. The best and first idea I had was to put them off their feed. If I insulted you, I apologize, but at the time I was more concerned with keeping a troll from biting off that youngster’s head.” He nods toward Ori who gives him a wan, yet grateful smile and the steam leaves Thorin in a rush.

“I see.” He breathes out and Balin releases his shoulder. Thorin jerks his coat back into place and looks to Gandalf, who’s been watching their exchange with poorly concealed interest. “You have our gratitude, Burglar Baggins.” He says to the hobbit who nods his thanks, although it’s not lost on Thorin that he never actually answered the question of what he was doing in the camp.

Gandalf smiles at Thorin, as though sensing the direction of his thoughts. “A neat solution.” The wizard says to the hobbit. “One I was considering employing myself until you intervened. Most interesting.” He says. “We are looking to hire a burglar for a lucrative excursion beyond the Misty Mountains. I think that you will do nicely. You have already proven yourself to have a creative approach to danger.”

“There we will have to disagree.” The hobbit replies and beats the dust from his waistcoat with short angry little sweeps of his nimble fingers. “As I am not a burglar …or a thief.” He adds the last while favoring Thorin with a gimlet eye. “Nor am I seeking employment. I’ve business of my own that precludes accepting other work. I apologize, but that’s the way of it.”

“Oi, if you aren’t a thief then how did you know why not to steal a troll’s purse?” Kili drawls and then quails under his Uncle’s thunderous glare. “Not… that I tried to do that.” He squeaks.

“I read, Master Dwarf.” Baggins replies reprovingly and starts to look a bit thorny again. He thrusts his hands into his pockets and scowls. “I cannot recommend it enough as a pastime.”

“You had a touch with those ponies, I noticed.” Fili cuts in, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “He got them to move without making a single sound. He had an exit that would fit them cut free already and everything. It’s back that a way and the vines are still bleeding sap where he trimmed them back.”

“They’re Shire ponies.” Baggins shifts his weight from foot to foot as Thorin’s nephews pen him in. “Hobbits don’t ride so they’re trained to obey voice commands and gestures in order to work the fields. I pointed them in the right direction and gave them the command to walk in a single file. It the same one farmers use to have them pull a plow.”

“So you’re a farmer then?” Fili grins, showing all his teeth and Baggins starts to splutter. “Don’t be angry, Mister Boggins. No one’s angry with you. It’s not as though you tried to steal from us. Robbing trolls hardly counts!”

“I’m not a horse thief!” Baggins explodes and then clamps a hand over his mouth with a mortified expression.

“Then what kind of thief are you?” Fili asks, looking well pleased with himself for catching the Halfling out in a lie.

“No sort of thief at all.” Baggins replies. “I was exploring a cave nearby that just so happened to turn out to be a trellwarren when I saw one of the creatures pass with your ponies. I recognized them. They were bred and trained by old Edinraf in Tuckborough. Seemed a shame to let them die like and I knew they had owners, just not where.”

“Interesting.” Gandalf hums. “Interesting indeed. Perhaps you’d show us this cave?”

“I… yes, of course.” The hobbit coughs and looks away. He nods to himself and says, “Yes. Certainly, this way. Ah… be ready to cover your noses and mouths. The air inside is rather thick and those with tender stomachs should probably stay outside.”

The hobbit leads them out the troll camp and a short distance away through a stand of beech trees that conceal the cave’s mouth. He was not, Thorin is displeased to note, exaggerating about the obscene stench emanating from the entrance. Torches don’t do much to dispel the gloom inside, but reveal the trolls’ little cache of stolen goods quite nicely.

Bilbo hangs back as the dwarves haul out pots of gold coins and whatever foodstuffs they can put their hands on that haven’t gone off. Orcrist is in Thorin’s belt where it belongs and Gandalf has claimed Glamdring.

“Quite the burglar you’ve found us!” Bofur comments to Gandalf within Bilbo’s hearing. “One evening’s acquaintance and he’s already increased our fortunes.”

“Perhaps it would be kinder of you to lower your future expectations.” Gandalf says and peers over to where Bilbo is seated on a stump, flanked by Thorin’s nephews who have not thus far given him an opportunity to escape. “However, I agree. He has unexpected depths.”

Bilbo makes a face at the wizard just as Thorin leaves off his supervising Dwalin and the others as they bury the gold for later retrieval.

“Not a thief, you say?” He asks with a twinkle of something that looks suspiciously like amusement in his eye. “I suppose you prefer the title ‘treasure hunter’ or ‘professional rogue’?”

“I’m a gentlehobbit, sir.” Bilbo replies. “A businesshobbit at most.”

“Close enough, I think, judging by the evidence.” Thorin says and nods to Balin who withdraws a familiar roll of parchment from the interior folds of his coat and hands it to Thorin, who extends it for Bilbo’s perusal. “I think the remuneration will be sufficient to warrant putting off your other business.”

Bilbo pretends to examine the contract for a time. It’s much the same as what he remembers up to and including the parts extolling the potential dangers and the clause covering his potential funeral expenses. He reads it again for good measure before he looks up and asks a question he had always wanted the answer to, but was never quite brave enough to ask.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” He says and …yes, Thorin’s look of offense is exactly as he remembers it being.

“I beg your pardon?” Thorin growls.

“Burglar holds harmless and without blame in perpetuity the Company and its successors for any notoriety, incarceration, or proceedings brought against, in regard to or as a result of the adventure or any activities related thereto.” Bilbo reads aloud and squints at Thorin. “So, in effect, if I get into trouble during the course of my employment to you then I am on my own.”

Thorin turns a dull shade of red. It’s hard to tell if it’s from affront or embarrassment so Bilbo continues.

“Also includes slander, libel, loss of face or of social standing in country of Burglar’s origin. Charming. Remedies shall similarly not be sought for any unlooked-for misfortune befalling Burglar’s home during his absence” Bilbo cocks an eyebrow at the assembled dwarves as he skips ahead to the clauses regarding repayment. “Cash on delivery, up to and not exceeding one fourteenth of the total profit [if any]. Not including any of the gross paid to other parties in lieu of royalties or help and provisions given or loaned. Then there is this part: Furthermore, the company shall retain any and all Recovered Goods until such a time as a full and final reckoning can be made, from which the Total Profits can then be established.  Then, and only then, will the Burglar’s fourteenth share be calculated and decided. So, I could potentially be paid nothing at all and only when you’ve inventoried all of…whatever it is that you wish me to steal for you?”

“You will be paid, thief.” Thorin crosses his arms over his chest. “From the profits of our journey.”

“Yes, I gathered that.” Bilbo skims ahead. “What of this part? Disputes arising between the Contract Parties shall be heard and judged by an arbitrator of the Company’s choosing and all pleas shall be pleaded, shrewed [sic], defended, answered, debated and judged in the Dwarvish Tongue. I would have you edit that clause, were I to consider signing this as I do not speak your language and unless I’ve missed my guess your culture forbids you to teach it to me. It would be foolish of me to sign any contract whose language prevented me from having it enforced.” He folds it up and hands it back. “We’ll not even discuss those provisions about ‘potential incineration’ and just move on to the fact that you haven’t told me what it is you want me to do for you at this Lonely Mountain.”

Balin takes the contract back from him, but doesn’t seem particularly offended even though Bilbo suspects he was the one to draft it. “You’ve some experience in legal matters, I see.” He observes.

“I’ve been known to make loans on occasion.” Bilbo replies and immediately wishes he hadn’t when Fili turns to his brother and mouths the word ‘loan shark’. “Not like that.” He huffs, but Fili and Kili only nod their agreement with overly-wide eyes and disbelieving little smiles. He turns back to Thorin. “Anyway, I’ve already told you. I have business in the Misty Mountains and cannot put it off. You’ll have to find yourself ano… a thief elsewhere.”

“The arbitration clause can be mended. Balin will see to it.” Thorin says at last, looking as though the words cost him. “Our journey will take us through the Misty Mountains. It is within my purview to alter our course as I see fit. I would make allowance for your ‘business’ there, provided you do not dawdle or endanger my company.”

“It’s not that simple!” Bilbo cries as Fili and Kili both settle heavy hands on his shoulders. “I don’t…” He stills as Fili holds up a hand to silence him.

“Wait.” The young dwarf is peering around and has gone tense all over. “Hear that? Kili.”

Kili hauls Bilbo off his stump and out of the line of fire as the relative silence of the forest suddenly explodes into crashing bushes, snarls, hot breath, and… oh heavens, that’s a warg!

Bilbo scrambles out the way as the dwarves mob the lone warg and put it down with brutal efficiency. Still, his heart is hammering against the inside of his rib cage. What is this? What is going on? There should have been nothing but trolls here, but now there are wargs?

Where the wargs run the orcs cannot be far behind.

This is another change and Bilbo does not like it. He doesn’t.

Chapter Text

“Who did you tell about your quest beyond your kin?” Gandalf advances upon Thorin.

“No one.” Thorin replies and stares at the dead warg. It’s not the biggest Bilbo has ever seen and looks a bit weedy; less young and more like it’s been underfed. So… it’s a less valuable member of the pack? Probably an advance scout then.

“Who did you tell?” Gandalf repeats himself.

“No one!” He shakes his head in an angry denial. “I swear it. What in Durin’s name is going on?”

“You are being hunted.” The wizard looks to Bilbo. “Or you. Have you enemies, master Burglar?”

“None.” Bilbo replies and looks in the direction where he left Apple. “I need…” His saddlebags are back there as well as his knapsack.

Dwalin grasps Thorin by the arm. “We have to get out of here.” He says in a low urgent whisper.

“We can’t!” Ori comes tumbling out the bushes, presumably from the direction of the dwarves’ camp. “We have no ponies! They bolted.”

Bilbo groans. The poor things probably smelled the wargs. They won’t have run far, but… he blinks as Fili grabs him by the shoulder.

“Can you do anything?” Fili hisses. “Is there any… I don’t know, a trick you could use? Like how you made them walk to me before? Do your farmers have a way of calling them in from the field?”

“I… yes?” Bilbo gulps. “I’ve never. I don’t know if it will work, but… ah…” He thinks hard. This is all strange and too new! Why are there orcs this far out? Orcs hate trolls. “I may know something that will work. Maybe.”

He ducks under Fili’s arm and bolts for the stone where he left Apple with the order to stay. Hopefully she hasn’t scented the wargs and run off too…

Apple doesn’t bother to look up from her grazing as Bilbo skids into the little clearing. Nor does she favor the dwarves who come crashing in behind him with more than a twitch of her leaf-shaped ears. Bilbo tosses his saddle-bags over her withers and thrusts her reins into the hands of the nearest dwarf (Kili, he thinks). “Hold onto these, but don’t try to stop her when she tries to go. Just follow her.” He say and then looks up to the big jutting rock. “Someone give me a boost up there?”

It’s… it’s very high once he clambers up to the top; very, very high. Bilbo tries to ignore the wobbling pitch of his stomach as he places the tips of his index fingers on the tip of his tongue, tucks it behind his teeth, and whistles that same long undulating note that haunts every evening in the Shire when the farmers call their livestock together in the pastures in order to drive them back home.

If he's very, very, very lucky then Edinraf uses the same whistle to call his herd together and Apple will guide one of the dwarves straight to where the others have grouped together.

Apple’s head lifts and her ears prick up as she leans away from Kili. Bilbo flaps his hands at the dwarf, trying to convey ‘follow her’ with his hands. It takes two more whistles before Bilbo can hear the sounds of rotund little bodies moving through the brush and… yes. There they are!

Fili and Kili ride past, driving the dwarves’ tiny herd of ponies between them with Apple bringing up the rear as Bilbo skids and slides down the side of the boulder. Bilbo whistles again sharply and Apple peels away from the herd to come wait for him on the ground. He mounts with trembling hands (and legs and well, trembling everything) and spurs her on after the main group.

Now would be the time to make his escape, but… no. Not with a warg pack coming down on their heads. Wargs, like wolves, will instinctively hunt down any stragglers from a herd. It’s safest with the dwarves for now.

“I don’t like this!” Bilbo hisses between his teeth in what has rapidly become a mantra. “I don’t like this one bit!”

The ponies give them the advantage of a little speed, but the orc pack isn’t far behind their scout. Bilbo can hear them snarling about ‘dwarf scum’ in heavily-accented and broken Westron, which answers the questions of exactly who it is they’re hunting. There must have been more than one scout and the others retreated while the scrawny one with more to prove chose to attack. Figures.

Shire ponies are sturdy and blessed with the stamina of a creature twice their size, but they also have short legs. The distance between the orc pack and their prey shrinks steadily as they break out onto the open flat High Moor and out of the wooded gorges.  The High Moor is miles upon miles of wide open grassland dotted with the same random boulders that define Bruinen Gorges, which means plenty of flat ground to run across but little to no cover to speak of.

Bilbo can think of better places to evade pursuit.

“Stay ahead of them!” Gandalf seems to have a specific destination in mind and is spurring his horse relentlessly forward, while whispering arcane encouragement into its ear. Bilbo hopes he’s leading them towards Rivendell …or better yet, an elven border patrol because the difference between Gandalf’s horse and the ponies is beginning to show as the horse pulls ahead and the ponies start to lag.

“Come on, girl.” Bilbo murmurs into Apple’s spikey mane. She’s even shorter in the leg and smaller in the chest than the dwarves’ ponies. The only reason she’s kept pace so far is because Bilbo makes for a comparatively lighter burden, but she was not made to race nor even to run long distances and Bilbo can feel her sides heaving as she strives to stay ahead of the wargs.

Something whizzes past Bilbo’s ear and a warg yelps in pain behind him. Fili’s got Kili’s pony’s reins lashed to his saddle-horn when Bilbo looks up ahead and Kili’s turned around in his seat and already drawing back another arrow. He looses it and wounds a second warg. Bilbo answers the young dwarf’s  grin with one of his own.

Then an eerie horn blast sweeps across the plan followed by the thunder of hooves. Bilbo can’t see the elven patrol through the cloud of dust kicked up by the ponies. They’re vague bulky shapes flashing by on either side of him followed by howls of pain and sickening crunches. Bilbo swallows down his rising gorge and lets Apple fall down into a more comfortable pace when the elves sound an ‘all clear’ with a second horn blast.

He looks up as the patrol breaks into two groups to flank Thorin’s company and funnel them in the direction of Rivendell. Two of the elves peel away to specifically ride alongside Bilbo. Unlike the soldiers who favor plate armor made in the elven style, these two wear lighter mail shirts under grey cloaks.

“Let your little one walk.” One advises him and tilts back his helmet to reveals a familiar and well-loved face, which is also identical to that of his fellow rider and also brother. “That was quite a ride, but there is no sense punishing her for keeping pace with the others by forcing her to continue to do so. Have no fear. No harm will befall you.” He continues. “I am Elladan. My brother, Elrohir, and I will escort you into our homeland. I apologize for the necessity of it, but you came out of the Trollshaws and our father, Lord Elrond of the lands your people call Rivendell, will want to speak with your group regarding your experiences there.”

“Y-yes. Of course” Bilbo swallows as he lets Apple down to a fast walk. He pats her shoulder as she tosses her head in annoyance, but she needs to cool down properly before he lets her have a slow walk. “I know it hasn’t been a pleasant day for you and you missed your supper, but I’m sure there’s a nice stable they’ll let me borrow in Rivendell for you.” He mutters more for his benefit than hers.

“Aye, and any number of other comforts for a brave mount.” Elladan agrees, displaying the kind sense of humor that Bilbo always liked in him. “May I have your name, sir?”

“I am Bilbo Baggins of Bag End in the Shire.” Bilbo feels himself go red starting at his collar and piping up all the way to his ears. Time was that he was on very good terms with every member of Elrond’s family, but that time is no more. These boys do not know him, no matter how familiar they seem to Bilbo. “Thank you for your intervention.”

“You are welcome. Orcs are foul creatures, but usually not as foolish as to come so far into our lands.” Elladan frowns at the horizon. “…nor so large.” He adds thoughtfully. “They must have come down from Mount Gundabad.”

“A few escaped.” Elrohir volunteers breaking his silence. “They will serve as a reminder to the others, no doubt. Tell me, Master Hobbit, what brought you into dwarrow company? Normally your people don’t have much truck with the dwarves.”

“We were thrown together by a misadventure in the Bruinen Gorge.” Bilbo replies, choosing his words carefully. “There was a party of trolls.”

“Trolls? So far away from the mountains?” Elrohir makes a displeased face and trades looks with his brothers. “…and Gundabad Orcs this far south. I wonder what’s driven them from their usual haunts?”

“Father may have some thoughts on the matter.” Elladan shrugs a shoulder. “If not, then Mithrandir there surely will.” He nods ahead. “Does the wizard accompany you or the dwarves, Master Baggins?”

“I’m sure if you asked him then he would say his business is his own.” Bilbo replies. “Question me about my affairs as you like, but if you want information on the others then you’ll have to go directly to the source.”

“He’s got you there, Dan.” Elrohir cracks out a sharp laugh and reins his horse in as they draw up along the rest of the party, who have all stopped for some reason. “Ho! What is the hold up?”

Thorin is the one who replies. “You have one of our number who fell behind there with you.” He bares his teeth at Elladan in something that could be called a smile, but smiles rarely display quite so many teeth. “We were only waiting for him to catch up.” He looks to Bilbo and nods sharply in the direction of the others. “Keep to the center of the group and speak to no more elves.”

“I’ll ride wherever you like, but speak to whomever pleases me.” Bilbo replies. “And you needn’t worry about me sharing about your affairs. I may be many things, but a gossip isn’t one of them.”

“Stay close anyway.” Thorin snaps. “Elves aren’t to be trusted.”

One of the nearby riders says something in Sindarin that is every bit as uncomplimentary as the dwarves receive it as and Bilbo rolls his eyes. He coaxes Apple up to walk alongside Gandalf who gives him a sympathetic nod and they ride together in peaceful companionable silence.

At least one good thing has come of this mess, Bilbo reflects. He has his wizard once more.

“Well, at least the Halfling shares his disrespect out evenly and without prejudice.” Balin comments to Thorin speaking in their own language and mindful of the long ears surrounding them. “It’s good to know it’s not just you.”

“Hmph.” Thorin snorts and keeps an eye on the small figure riding by Gandalf’s side. He doesn’t seem inclined to chat and the elves keep a respectful distance from the wizard. “There is that.”

“You must persuade him, Thorin.” Balin turns in his seat and smiles like he’s discussing the weather. “We won’t have an opportunity to replace him. It’s the Halfling or no one. For my money, I’m not sure we could find a better.”

“Yes.” Thorin spits the word out. It’s sour on his tongue, but no less true and the Halfling is …honorable enough. He hadn’t much bothered to lower his tone when carrying on conversation with those elves and his voice carried. At the very least he’s shown that he can be trusted not to give up the company’s secrets for a pat on the head, which was a real fear on Thorin’s part. Halflings aren’t known for their abilities at subterfuge, but this one at least seems to have learned. “I hear you. However he may not hear me.”

“You two do seem to rub each other the wrong way. Hmm.” Balin falls silent as he thinks. “Perhaps your nephews will have better luck?”

Thorin cocks his head and considers it. “Perhaps.” He agrees gruffly. “It’s no worse than any of the alternatives.”

Proceeding without a thief isn’t an option nor is delay. They haven’t much time before other forces begin to descend upon the Mountain.

“I will do whatever is necessary.” He tells Balin, who nods his grave agreement.

They’ll all do whatever is necessary.

Chapter Text

Elrond greets them at the gates of the Last Homely House with arms opened wide for Gandalf and his sons. Bilbo hangs back among the dwarves to watch them because his skin is still itching from how different everything is.

The dwarves are ill at ease surrounded by elves and the Elrond’s people border on outright hostile (for elves anyway). Bilbo can’t decide if it’s just wistful thinking that his first visit to Rivendell was more cordial all around or if this is another of those deeply unsettling changes he’s come to dread.

“Stay close.” Thorin mutters, although it’s not readily clear to whom he is speaking; possibly everyone.

Elrond and Gandalf converse affably in Sindarin, which Bilbo only listens to with half an ear seeing as he is surrounded and jostled by dwarves on all sides. For the most part, it’s meaningless chit-chat; the sort of polite back and forth that naturally occurs when old friends meet again after a long time apart. Elladan makes a report to his father about the orcs, but offers no information that Bilbo hasn’t already heard.

Only then does Elrond turn to acknowledge the dwarfish company. “Welcome, Thorin, son of Thráin.” He offers, most cordially.

“I do not believe we have met.” Thorin replies gruffly, but polite enough given his evident discomfort.

“You have your grandfather's bearing.” Elrond replies and looks Thorin over, taking his measure. “I knew Thrór when he ruled under the mountain.” He says at last.

“Indeed?” Thorin says with the sort of polite rudeness one can typically expect from an annoyed dwarf. “He made no mention of you.”

“It’s as if Thrór reincarnated specifically to come stand on my front step and talk back to me. I will allow that he is who he claims to be.” Elrond comments to Gandalf in Sindarin. “Well, I’ve yet to meet a dwarf who will refuse a meal. That ought to keep them quiet for a time.”

Bilbo inhales badly and chokes on a bit of spit as the dwarves react to Elrond’s tone in a manner that isn’t entirely inappropriate.

Glóin brandishes his axe at Elrond’s departing back. “What is he saying? Does he offer us insult?” He demands of Gandalf.

“No, master Glóin.” Gandalf sighs, despairing –no doubt- of both dwarves and elves. “He is offering you food.”

“Ah, well.” Glóin abruptly sheathes his axe and his attitude and nods his complete acceptance. “In that case, lead on.”

Bilbo sighs as the rest of the company follows suit. Attendants arrive to take their reins and Bilbo spends what is probably too much time explaining what kind of day his mount has had and the special treatment he promised her as they fled the wargs.

“I doubt she understood…” He tells the amused stable hand. “…but just in case?”

“I will see to her care myself, Master Hobbit.” He promises Bilbo with an indulgent smile and leads her away to be pampered.

Thorin is waiting for him when Bilbo finally follows. Dwalin is standing behind him like an angry shadow. “You have a habit of lagging behind.” The dwarf prince observes with his arms crossed over his chest.

“As short as dwarf legs are compared to the rest of Middle Earth, Hobbit legs are shorter.” Bilbo grumps as he mounts the stairs up to Elrond’s home. They were made with men and elves in mind and not Hobbits. The rise is not terribly steep, but Bilbo has to raise his legs up higher than what comes naturally to him. The number of times he’s tripped and fallen on his face while climbing these very steps do not bear counting. “I suggest you either accustom yourself to it or find another potential employee to badger.”

“So, you are at least potentially willing to consider my offer?” Thorin drawls and Bilbo immediately wants to kick himself for opening himself up to a verbal trap. Damn dwarf has a mind like a mouse trap!

“Holding your breath would be an inadvisable strategy.” He replies and is rewarded by a harsh and unexpected bark of laughter from his companion.

“You’ll join us, burglar.” Thorin promises him and bares his strong white teeth in a lion’s smile. “I’ll find the argument that persuades you.”

“You do that.” Bilbo says and looks away to his shame. Was Thorin always like this? He seems different …or is Bilbo only remembering things badly? It’s like this every time he looks at the dwarf now; a subtle dissonance between the portrait painted by his memory and the reality looking down its considerable nose at him.

“What did the elf really say?” Thorin asks after a brief lull. He snorts and looks amused when Bilbo gives him a startled look. “You understand their language. I can tell from the way you nod along when one of them speaks.”

“It’s probably for the best that I don’t tell you.” Bilbo says cautiously. “Suffice to say he said you favor your grandfather and that your kinsmen are probably hungry.”

“That leaves a great deal of room for interpretation, Burglar.” Thorin replies, eying him with opaque thoughts drifting to and fro behind his frosted blue eyes.

“Not that much.” Bilbo counters and looks ahead of them. There are winsome elven ladies sweetly bullying the rest of the company away from the feasting hall and in the direction of one of the big communal bath houses.

“What the hell are they doing?” Dwalin grumbles.

“Elves enjoy long baths before a large social meal.” Bilbo explains without thinking. “They say it aids the appetite and stimulates conversation, but on a practical level I at least have been on the road for several weeks.” He plucks at his collar and sighs when it flops over like a wilted spinach leaf. Sadly, he can’t say that any of the shirts in his knapsack are in any better condition.

“You seem to know a great deal our hosts.” Thorin murmurs thoughtfully and Bilbo feels his cheeks go hot again.

“I read.” He mutters. Fortunately he has a lie at hand that has the benefit of being somewhat true. “There are some Westron publishing houses, but they operate out of Gondor or too far south to reach the Shire easily. Elvish literature is easier to come by.”

“I see.” Is the noncommittal response he receives. Of course Thorin wouldn’t be convinced.

Elven bath houses are actually quite pleasant if you don’t have any issues with overwhelming modesty. They’re communal, open to the public, and make no divisions between genders. One scrubs up with astringent soap and sea sponges in the tiled antechamber and sluices off under a cold artificial waterfall.

“It invigorates the blood.” Bilbo translates for the others as a bath attendant –who is cheerfully unconcerned by his own nudity, much to the discomfort of his dwarfish guests- explains the use of the facilities. “…and counteracts the effects of soaking in the bath.”

“What bath?” Kili isn’t the only one peering around, looking for the conspicuously absent bath tubs, but he’s the first one brave enough to ask.

“It’s through there.” Bilbo points to a large set of doors carved from a single piece of the pale wood native to the valley of Imladris, carefully shaped and polished to resemble rain drops tumbling over broad leaves and tree branches.

He doesn’t pay much attention to his companions as he strips and leaves his clothing in a basket with the attendant, who promises to have it taken to the laundry and replaced with something clean. No one in the Shire is particularly body-shy, not when the only way to cool down in the summer months is to strip down and go wading in the shallow stone-lined ponds and rivers that are scattered throughout their green land. Some families like the Tooks are rich and lucky enough to have private water parks, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.

This, at least, is familiar. Bilbo used to miss the privacy of his old copper tub laid out in front of the fire. One can hardly bring a book out into the common bath, but there’s always someone up for a chat …or peaceful silence depending on one’s mood. Sometimes there is music if there’s a musician who has the time and feels inclined to donate it to the community, which is surprisingly often in Rivendell.

It isn’t until Ori settles on the stool next to him and starts trying to wash himself while simultaneously keeping both hands cupped over his private parts that Bilbo realizes that there might be a problem. The others are adjusting with varying degrees of ease. Dwalin and Balin have already stripped off and are scrubbing away like the old soldiers they are, but few of the others are adjusting nearly so well. Thorin is nowhere to be seen at all.

“You haven’t got anything that will surprise anyone in here.” Bilbo tells Ori, not unkindly and pitched just loud enough to carry. “Or vice versa. Just keep your eyes above chin level and they’ll be forced to do the same.”

“... but there are…” Ori turns brilliant pink as he nods in the vague direction of an elven matron who has a squirming child locked between her knees as she scrubs the back of his neck. “There are ladies present.”

“I promise she does not care.” Bilbo says. She looks like she has other things on her mind. Bilbo can hear her muttering dire things to the boy all the way across the room.

“…what’s she saying?” Ori squeaks, having followed Bilbo’s gaze.

“She says she could plant parsnips behind his ears if she had a mind to.” Bilbo translates, which is a bit of a fib but the word she actually used doesn’t translate very well and implies that she could plant not only parsnips, but potatoes, corn, and a few good sized trees to shelter it all.

Surprisingly, that startles a laugh out of Ori and eases some of the tension in his narrow shoulders. “Dori used to say the same to me all the time when I was a sprog, only he said ‘mushrooms’.”

“My mother too.” Bilbo chuckles. “She said ‘mandrakes’. Mushrooms probably would have only encouraged me.”

“It encouraged him too.” Dori sighs as he sits down on Bilbo’s other side. “It took me a year to figure out why his neck only got dirtier every passing week.”

“I was trying to be helpful.” Ori sputters. “It made sense at the time. I was ten!”  Fortunately he seems to have forgotten to be embarrassed and is scrubbing with the wild abandon of someone who’s probably been in the same suit of clothes for a month.

“Aye.” Dori agrees and reaches over Bilbo to tilt his brother’s head forward. “So what’s your excuse now?”

“Oh, shove off.” Ori mutters and Bilbo –satisfied that he’s helped at least a little- gets up to rinse off.

Some of the dwarves follow him out to the main bath, which is how he comes to be front and center when Fili and Kili realize just what ‘open to the public’ can mean in elven culture.

Bilbo is about to sit down on the marble edge of the bath in preparation of sliding into the steaming hot water, which smells like it’s been piped in from a natural mineral spring, when two different hands clamp down on his shoulders and he gets jerked back and forth in a momentary scuffle that ends with Fili using him as a miniature privacy screen while Kili cups his privates like Ori was earlier.

“You never said it was open to the air.” Kili hisses at him and stares in abject dismay at the open sky above them and a group of fully clothed elves who are enjoying the afternoon light out on one of the terraced gardens that flank the bath. “I’m not soaking out where all and sundry can see!”

Bilbo squints at the far off figures, who are little more than colorful smudges in the distance. “I doubt they can see you any better than you can see them.” He sighs. “If it bothers you then get in. They won’t see anything below the waist after that.”

As tactics go, it’s a fairly effective one and Bilbo is able to ease himself into the water once the dwarves have literally thrown themselves in. However, if he was expecting a peaceful soak then he finds himself sorely disappointed.

The rest of the company appears two by two or three by three and being both an insular people and uncomfortable with their setting, they end up clustering up in one end of the tub with their backs turned to the other bathers. Sadly, as Bilbo was the first to pick a spot to relax in they end up gravitating towards his familiar face.

It’s… it’s not actually bad. Once no one in the company has to see the elves surrounding them, it’s apparently easier to pretend they aren’t there and before long Bilbo is wedged in between Balin and Dwalin and all three of them are dozing off in the sunshine and hot water while the younger contingent rough-houses with one another.

This is one of the old memories that faded as time passed and Bilbo got older, but he remembers scrubbing up in chilly streams and sun-warmed lakes like this. He can’t dredge up a memory of ever encountering a proper communal bath before Elladan and Elrohir brought him to one though. He and the company must have skipped it that first time.

‘Shame on us.’ He thinks drowsily. ‘We missed a treat.’

“Looks like he’s joining us at last.” Dwalin comments out of the blue and Bilbo automatically looks up to see Thorin striding towards the bath like he’s heading into battle. The sight sits badly with Bilbo for a moment or two until he suddenly realizes that he can never recall ever seeing his old companion outside of his armor before, which… surely that can’t have been the case?

He has vague foggy-edged recollections of the geometric tribal tattoos that literally cover Dwalin from the crown of his head to the tops of his feet. There’s an orc-bite on Balin’s hip that never healed smooth. Bofur has a rose-colored birthmark that covers most of his back and Ori is so pale that Bilbo remembers thinking that the boy must have never exposed any part of his body to the sun save his face before circumstances conspired to force him into it.

What he has no recollection of whatsoever are the pale scars that bisect the this dark whorls of hair covering Thorin’s chest and stomach or the broad sharp-edged indigo tattoo spread across his shoulders like wings or the hilt of a sword.

“Uncle, you’re cheating!” Kili crossing his arms on the lip of the bath and drops his chin down onto his wrists. He looks pointedly and the off-white length of cotton that Thorin had wrapped neatly around his hips. “No one else wore a towel.”

“Deal with it.” Thorin advises him and gets in towel and all.

Bilbo has to admit that it’s a neat solution to the problem. Now if only he could figure out why he’s feeling vaguely disappointed?

Chapter Text

The feast is much as Bilbo remembers it …or so he gathers. He’s not a member of the dwarfish company or Gandalf’s companion so he’s seated elsewhere, but with the honor of Elladan and Elrohir’s company.

“This is a fine little dirk.” Elladan turns Sting over in his hands and gently unsheathes it. “A bollock dagger unless I’ve missed my guess. Old Gondolin craftsmanship. They favored this style of dagger back then for defense.” He hands it back to Bilbo. “This was a valuable find.”

“Thank you.” Bilbo slides it back under his coat and tries not to be too visibly relieved at the feel of it against his ribs. Funny, it sat in a chest outside his study for nearly sixty years and only came out for the occasional cleaning. He was never so attached to Sting until he left dropped the One Ring on the stone tiles just inside the door of Bag End. The deafening sound it made (in his ears or inside his head) as it hit the ground is still with him in a way although it fades a little with every passing day. Sting became a crutch in those early days when he thought his ears would wither and fall off from that single relentless note; a reminder of the good he had done and the times when he was strong.

Having it back is good, but also a reminder that one day soon he’ll have to be strong again.

“I think it might have slept in hallowed company.” Elrohir comments. He’s half-listening to Elladan and half paying attention to their father. “Hear that, Dan? Father just named the Beggar King’s sword Orcrist and Mithrandir’s Glamdring.”

“Hallowed company indeed.” Elladan mutters darkly. “May those swords serve them well. If they’re headed into the mountains then they’ll see combat. I won’t weep if the goblin numbers get reduced.” He turns to Bilbo. “…but perhaps this isn’t dinner conversation. Would you like father to examine your blade as well? Perhaps it has a history.”

“I doubt it.” Bilbo favors him with a tight smile. “Swords are named for the great deeds they do in battle. Mine is barely a dinner knife.”

“Well, that’s where we’ll have to disagree.” Elladan’s smile is softer and a little distant. “Swords are named by the great people that wield them and those come in all shapes and sizes.”

“I’ve never heard that variation of the saying before.” Bilbo chortles and spears a bit of vegetation on his plate. There’s a lot of greenery on the table, he’s noticed. No one could ever fault the quantities laid out, but the content seems to be bowls upon bowls of dressed vegetables, which are mainly uncooked. This isn’t what he remembers of Rivendell hospitality. “I, ah, don’t wish to be a poor guest …but aren’t your evening meals a bit heavier than this?”

Elrohir swallows badly and Elladan pounds him on the back until he’s stopped coughing. “Ah, yes.” He admits (very softly.) He leans forward after a brief check to make sure his father and none of the dwarfish guests at the main table are looking in their direction. “I think father’s getting a bit of fun at the King in Exile's expense. It’s petty, but…”

Bilbo doesn’t return his sheepish grin. “It is petty.” He replies and makes no further comment, but he’s a little heartsick. He’d thought better of Elrond than that and the disappointment does what a bottomless salad bowl failed to and kills off his appetite.

That exchange also kills their conversation, but it’s timely as one of the wine bearers arrives shortly afterwards with an invitation for Bilbo to join the conversation at the big table. Someone has pulled a chair up next Gandalf and the page who fetched him is kind enough to scoot it in for his when Bilbo’s feet fail to reach the floor.

Elrond greets him warmly and in Sindarin, which is a little rude given the dwarves seated on his other side, but Bilbo recognizes a familiar look in Elrond’s eye. There’s something he’s trying to figure out and quizzing Bilbo’s mastery of the language is part of it.

“I understand you were kind enough to act as translator for your companions outside.” He says with a smile.

“I was able to convey the basics of your greeting.” Bilbo demurs. “However my grasp on the elvish tongue doesn’t extend to many specifics. I apologize for any meaning that was lost in my fumbling attempts at a translator. My Sindarin is mostly theoretical.”

“That was perhaps for the best. Thank you.” Elrond replies and switches to Westron. “I have been shown the error of my ways. I apologize to all present company and those absent.” He allows his cup to be refilled and tilts one elegantly winged brow in Bilbo’s direction.

“No, thank you.” Bilbo replies with a smile. Elvish wine is a bit like trying to drink perfume in Bilbo’s opinion, which is all well and good unless you’ve been raised on robust Shire vintages. The dwarves are drinking, but their drinks have probably been limited to human pressings in recent years. Anything probably tastes good after that. “I have had too much already, I think.”

“Water then.” Elrond directs his server. “Tell me of your business in the Misty Mountains, Master Baggins.” He says afterwards. “There is little in those hills to tempt a businesshobbit such as yourself. I find myself curious …and also concerned. We have seen signs of trouble in those regions of late; displaced trolls, orc parties ranging too far from their mountain, and other troubling omens. I am reluctant to send anyone out into them.”

“I am looking for …a person, I suppose you could say.” Bilbo replies at length. Lying to an elf is the fastest way to get one interested in your business, he’s found. “He’s said to live there. Perhaps he does, perhaps he doesn’t. I wish to confirm it for myself.”

“Hmm. You have my best wishes in your endeavors then.” There’s a wrinkle in-between Elrond’s eyebrows, which Bilbo hopes doesn’t precede any kind of vision. He’s never understood how the Elf Lord’s prescience works, but he seems to have Elrond’s attention now and he can’t help but think that might be a bad thing.

“Master Baggins will be accompanying us for a time.” Gandalf says as he breaks a loaf of bread and offers half of it to Bilbo, who accepts and tears off a little bit of it to dip in a nearby bowl of salted oil. “Our goals are different for the time being, but our roads continue along the same direction. Will that put your mind at ease, old friend?”

“Yes.” Elrond murmurs thoughtfully. “It will at that. You must take care, Master Baggins.” He says and his smiles dims. No elf ever looks truly old, but Elrond does in that moment (only for a moment.) “I sense danger in your future. It is all around you, but I cannot tell you from which direction it will strike. Be ever on your guard.”

“I’ll take your warning to heart, Lord Elrond.” Bilbo promises. He looks down at his hands as an excuse not to reply further.

The truth is that no one ever promised him safety and he’s old enough now to know better than to think that it was ever implied. However, Bilbo’s also lived as long as two Hobbit lifetimes. He knows better than to believe he’s due yet a third.

He looks up and meets Thorin’s eyes from down the table and the dark scowl on his face leaves little chance that he wasn’t listening in on Bilbo’s conversation with Elrond.

‘Well, here’s a bright side.’ Bilbo consoles himself. At least he won’t have to worry about any more recruitment attempts now that he’s revealed as a potential problem. Elrond’s preannouncement turned out to be a blessing in disguise!

…now if only Bilbo could convince the sinking feeling in his stomach of that.

There is a brief lull between the end of the meal and when young Thorin is free to join them. Gandalf chooses to use that time to collar his old friend and pull him away into a private conversation.

“Do you mind explaining what you said to my young friend during supper?” He asks without preamble. There isn’t much time for small talk and they’re both well aware of it.

“I’m afraid I cannot, Mithrandir.” Elrond sighs and guides him out onto one of the verandas outside the feasting hall. “Your Hobbit is surrounded by a dark aura. It doesn’t seem to be his, but it is on him all the same. He has or will have the attention of something that does not mean him well.”

“I mislike hearing that, especially coming from you.” Gandalf fingers the bowl of his pipe, but does not light it. It’s a soothing motion that yet does little to calm him. He has always been fond of the simple pastoral people of the Shire and doesn’t like seeing one threatened.

“Nor do I like saying it to you.” Elrond looks out into the night sky. “Your Hobbit has a destiny larger than he is, but what exactly it is has not been given to me to know. I can only tell you this, if he goes into it alone then he will fail and die …and our world will be the darker for it.”

“Then I must hope that the leader of my little company can make himself persuasive.” Gandalf lays a hand on Elrond’s shoulder. “We will look after him.”

“That you must.” Elrond agrees. “For if he dies, then I foresee that your dwarves will as well.”

Bilbo takes himself for a walk once the meal lets out. He isn’t in the mood to rest and so does not take himself to the little bunk houses that Elrond keeps for unannounced guests and other travelers.

There are reflecting pools built onto the eastern lawn outside the Last Homely House and once upon a time that hasn’t happened yet, they were convenient to Bilbo’s little suite of rooms. They became a welcome boon as age weighed heavier and heavier upon him and sleep became elusive for a time. The pools are intended to enhance one’s view of the night sky and some elves like to meditate upon them when they are distressed.

Meditation sounds good at this particular moment.

 ‘I always used to think that the problems between dwarves and elves boiled down to rude dwarves.’ He thinks as he wanders old familiar halls, wending his way in the direction of the reflecting pools. ‘Shows what I know. Gran always said that it takes two to argue.’

The route to the pools is either not as he remembers or hasn’t been built quite yet because Bilbo finds himself wandering into an empty portion of Elrond’s home and onto an open landing that overlooks a grove of walnut trees. The view is good so he decides to enjoy it and the cool evening breeze for a while.

Were things always so bad? Bilbo can’t tell if his memories are benefiting from the haze of nostalgia or if he was too naïve to see things the way they truly were back then …or if he had been merely wise and brave enough to choose to see only the best in the people around him.

“There’s no fool like an old fool.” Bilbo sighs and drags a hand over his eyes.

“An old sentiment, but generally true.” Someone agrees from behind him.

Bilbo jerks upright and turns to find a… a man, he supposes. The newcomer is no elf, but Bilbo has never met a man who didn’t favor trousers over long unwieldy robes; and what robes they are! The man is dressed all over in brilliant white with long graying hair and an equally long beard.

It isn’t until he steps out into the moonlight that Bilbo notices the polished black staff he carries and makes the connection.

‘He’s a wizard.’ Bilbo realizes and feels a tickle of unease. He knows little of wizards other than Gandalf and while this person is every bit as dour and stern-looking as Gandalf could ever want to be, he lacks that glitter of good humor that endears Gandalf to one and all.

“Good evening, sir.” He says because there’s no call for rudeness. “I didn’t mean to disturb your evening. Please forgive me.”

“You’ve disturbed nothing.” The wizard says, although his tone isn’t particularly reassuring. He has cold black eyes that do not reflect the light, rather they take everything in like two little holes.

“Then you’ll excuse me. I have friends here that I meant to meet up with.” Bilbo moves to edge past him only to find the wizard’s staff planted in his way. “Excuse me.” He says again and moves to go around it …only the air itself seizes all around him and he cannot move.

“I do not have spare time for you to waste, Halfling.” The wizard gestures and Bilbo’s feet carry him out further onto the landing and right up to the edge. “I’ve been watching you since I arrived. There is no deceiving me. Now tell me: where is it?”

The constriction around Bilbo’s throat eases just enough for him to speak. “Who are you?” He croaks.

“You know very well who I am.” The wizard replies coolly, almost disinterestedly. “Tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bilbo lies as though his life depended on it …and perhaps it does. “And I don’t know who you are!”

“There was and perhaps will be a time when your people will know my face very well.” The wizard says and the air bears down on him again until a thread whimper escapes Bilbo’s throat despite his inability to form a single word. “Once more. Where is it?”

“I don’t… I’d tell you if I knew what you wanted.” Bilbo gasps. His eyes are watering from want of a proper breath and a tear trickles down his cheek unbidden. “Please let me go!” He grunts as he’s lifted bodily off the ground and jerked up to the wizard’s eye level by an invisible force. He seizes Bilbo’s face with his boney, yet powerful fingers and holds him still, searching his eyes for something he does not find.

“You have no idea who I am.” The wizard sneers. “Not even enough to hazard a guess. You know nothing.”

“No…” Bilbo’s vision starts to fray around the edges, but his limbs will not obey him.

“This is your last opportunity. Tell me where the Ring may be found.” Something strange happens to the Wizard’s voice. It deepens in pitch and pounds against the inside of Bilbo’s head, shaking his brain like a bean inside of a drum. His mouth opens against his will and it feels like …it feels like the terrible, terrible compulsion he once felt propelling him towards his own nephew with fingers hooked like claws and only violence left in his heart.  

“I don’t…” Bilbo bites his tongue and takes strength from the feel of his dagger pressing in against his ribs. His mind clears and he’s able to gasp out, “What ring?”

The wizard drops him with a sound of disgust and the air releases its hold on Bilbo’s lungs. He draws in one long sweet breath, then another, and then another.

“Useless.” The wizard spits as Bilbo struggles to his feet, pawing at his side, and trying to unsheathe Sting with fingers that have gone numb and clumsy. The wizard gestures lazily and Bilbo goes flying almost to the edge of the landing. The wizard follows him and jerks him up by the collar with one hand. “Sleep well, Bilbo Baggins.” He says and his hand moves before Bilbo can truly comprehend what is about to happen.

Being stabbed is not a feeling one forgets easily. Bilbo has been stabbed before; once by accident while in the kitchen with some of his rowdier cousins and then again later by a lucky orc in the Battle of Five Armies outside the Lonely Mountain. Even so, the cold sickening punch of it is as unwelcome and violating as ever it was.

Bilbo stares down at his stomach in mute shock as the wizard jerks a thin pocket blade out of his midsection. He pushes back and staggers away, turning in an attempt to flee, only to realize that there is nowhere to run. The open expanse of trees below the landing lies below him and offers no escape route.

The wizard stabs him again, this time in the back in-between the ribs on his left side. A hand settles between his shoulder blades and shoves him forward off the blade…

…and off the landing.

Saruman watches the Halfling fall through the thick green canopy below their feet. The only thing down there is a disused tree park where the elves allow some of their livestock to forage. It will be days, perhaps a week before anyone finds the body.

“Well, at the very least I can now be rid of one small impediment.” He shrugs philosophically and closes his hand around the murder weapon in his hand.

The thin little blade crumples in on itself and dissolves into metallic dust that floats away on the night breeze leaving no evidence behind that it ever existed.

Chapter Text

Bilbo doesn’t feel the first layer of leaves he crashes through, but he does feel the branches crack and shatter underneath him. The world around him contracts to a tiny bubble of fear, pain, and shattered wood and then… nothing.

The next branch he hits curves underneath him, bowing under his weight yet not breaking. He slides off it and hits another, which also bends around him cradling him gently and slowing his descent. So it goes one after another until he’s dropped carefully and gently into a pair of spindly arms that cradle him against a chest covered in scratchy brown fabric that smells faintly of lichen and mouse dust.

“Oh my.” The owner of both arms and chest comments fretfully. “Oh my! Oh dear!”

Bilbo is barely clinging to consciousness and thus can only let himself be settled onto the soft grass. There are shapes moving in the periphery of his vision and his imagination paints them as enormous rabbits loping through the trees and whispering to one another in high thin noises that could almost be words.

“Not good!” His savior murmurs. “Not good at all!”

“Mmm…” Bilbo tries to find some words, but finds himself hushed instead. A warm dry palm settles over his eyes and the pain in him just retreats. He can still feel it waiting off somewhere in the wings, but it seems less important and all-consuming than it did a few moments ago. His vision clears enough to get a decent look at the …oh no. “No more wizards!” He moans.

“Enough of that.” The brown wizard chides him absently, like a parent whose attention is on other bigger things. Indeed, the wizard is undressing him like his mother might and searching him for wounds. “One here… and one here as well.” He mutters as he probes Bilbo’s stab wounds with dexterous fingers. “They must be sealed before I can move you. I have just the thing.”

He produces broad flat leaves from his sleeves and a pot of noxious smelling salve that he scrapes over the leaves like butter on bread and slaps them over Bilbo’s oozing wounds. He isn’t prepared for the way the salve burns like it’s eating into his flesh or the flash of heat he feels spreading through his middle.

“No fighting now!” The wizard cautions him. “It’s burning away any malignant humors left behind by whoever hurt you. That it hurts means it’s working. Bear it!” He looks away, focusing on something outside of Bilbo’s range of vision. “You there! Scrape your jaw up off the floor and fetch help! There’s been an accident!”

Time stops then for a little while in-between blinks. Bilbo never remembers much of what it’s like to pass out. Some folk dream others talk of blackness, but all Bilbo ever remembers is the sparkling beige he sees on the inside of his eyelids that lasts for what seems like the span of a few heartbeats.

He wakes up once in the middle of pandemonium. Someone is shouting in the distance. Bilbo thinks he can hear his name, but there’s a face floating above his …Elrond’s? Someone, anyway, and they murmur soothing nonsense words to him even as they press a cloth over his nose and mouth that send him back to that glittering moment suspended between breaths.

When next he wakes, he finds himself in a bed much too large for just himself in a room filled with light and the sound of harp music. For a moment he could almost believe that he’s in his own bed in Rivendell and just waking up from a dream, but then he tries to sit up and the music cuts out with a discordant clamor of notes.

Hands come from all around to push him back down, but the largest one is placed dead center on his chest and belongs to Gandalf who gently shoos all the others away. “Peace, my good hobbit.” He says. “…and my good dwarves. Peace, you are safe here. All is well.”

“W…where am I?” Bilbo peers around him. This does not look like the bunk house nor does it look like any suite of rooms that Bilbo has ever been invited into. He presses a hand to his wound and finds it all swathed in pure white bandages. It aches some, but not so fiercely as it did before.

“Lord Elrond has granted you use of a room normally reserved for his family. You are surrounded by friends.” Gandalf removes his hand from Bilbo’s chest. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than before.” Bilbo grunts and cranes his head to look around. His bed is surrounded by dwarves. Some are awake and some are sprawled out asleep on various bits of furniture, but they all seem to be present with the exception of Thorin and Ori. Kili is sprawled out asleep on the foot of Bilbo’s bed with his hand clasped around the hilt of his belt dagger even while he snores. Fili is awake and seated in the chair nearest Bilbo’s head while Gandalf is perched on the side of the bed so that the mattress dips under his weight. “I’m afraid that isn’t … ah! Saying much though.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.” Gandalf agrees gravely. “Lord Elrond and I worked through much of the night, tending to your wounds with the help of my colleague, who you may remember. He persuaded the trees to catch you when you fell. It is through his intervention that you are alive at all.”

Bilbo closes his eyes. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you might tell me that.” Gandalf says. He looks older than usual and haggard, which he never is. “Radagast told me it looked like you might have been pushed.”

“I…” Bilbo is interrupted by the sound of the door. He struggles up and is aided by Gandalf and Fili, who slide him up and settle him against a pillow. He looks at the newcomers and his throat goes dry.

Little Ori is standing in the entrance holding a basin of clean water with towels draped over his arm, but behind him…

The white wizard drops a heavy hand onto Ori’s shoulder, much to the dwarf’s mingled consternation and annoyance. He’s sporting a bland sort of smile, but it does not reach his eyes which are trained on Bilbo. Ori flinches a little as the wizard digs his fingers in.

Bilbo swallows. “I…” He tries again. “I don’t remember.”

Gandalf follows the line of Bilbo’s gaze and greets the other wizard with a respectful nod. “Saruman, I did not see you there.” He looks to Bilbo. “Forgive me, you will not know him. This is Saruman the White who is the head of my order.” He looks back to Saruman. “What brings you here? I thought the meeting was not until later when Lord Elrond has rested.”

“I was curious.” Saruman replies and removes his hand from Ori’s shoulder. “I had heard of the accident and came to see how your patient fared. He seems healthy.”

“Elrond is a gifted healer.” Gandalf replies. “Our hobbit is expected to make a full recovery.”

“Hmm. Yes. I see.” Saruman visibly dismisses the issue. “You mentioned Radagast? I would have words with him. Tell me where to find him.”

“I’m afraid Radagast has gone.” Gandalf places a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder and gives him a kindly smile. “He was on his way out when he found my young friend here and stayed to see him taken care of, but now that Bilbo is stable he has left to attend to his own business.”

“A shame.” Saruman replies tightly. “I will excuse myself. Dwarves. Hobbit.” He nods at both in turn before leaving in a swirl of white hems.

Bilbo sinks into his pillow as Ori rolls his shoulder and sets down his burden. That was a threat and a message rolled into one.

“Bilbo, are you all right?” Gandalf peers into his face. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No.” Bilbo sighs and closes his eyes. “I’m just tired …and I hurt.”

Gandalf nods gravely. “I imagine so.” He says and lifts a cup off the tray Ori brought. “This is for pain. It will make you sleep, but I think a nap would be welcome.”

“Thank you.” Bilbo fumbles for the cup, but Gandalf insists on holding it for him. The medicine is potent and takes rapid effect. It isn’t long before he’s drifting off into sleep once more, but at least this time it is restful.

The burglar is asleep again by the time Thorin returns from his meeting with the head of Rivendell’s domestic watchmen. Were it not for the fact that he and all his kin had alibies provided for them by no lesser figures than Elrond and his sons then Thorin thinks that they might be a the head of the list of suspects, but as it is he and his company remain ‘important witnesses’.

Fili is still on guard and looks up as Thorin enters the room. Most of the others have dispersed to find some supper, which looks like it will be coming out of their supplies if their ‘hosts’ make another attempt to pass off their lawn clippings as a meal. “Take your brother and get something to eat.” Thorin jerks a thumb at the door. His time with the elven guardsmen has soured his appetite. “I will keep watch here for now.”

“Thank you, uncle.” Fili shakes Kili awake rather more gently than is his usual habit, but then again Kili has the a sickbed to use as a shield.

He watches his nephews leave and then settles down in the chair Fili vacated. There are books piled up on the sideboard, which are mostly in Sindarin.

“You have a good pair of boys there.” The hobbit wheezes, making Thorin look up with a start. Bilbo makes a slight shape underneath his thin covers and has the pallor of one who’s lost blood… but not dangerous amounts. “Mischief, but good.”

“I’ll need that in writing.” Thorin replies and leans forward to check the halfling’s pupils, which are only a little smaller than dinner plates. “What have the elves given you?”

Bilbo makes a vague gesture towards a cup abandoned on the table at Thorin’s elbow. It contains the dregs of some pungent concoction that Oin would be able to recognize, but does much to explain Bilbo’s current condition.

“You must be in an interesting shape right now.” Thorin puts the cup away on a tray full of used water glasses.

Bilbo hums in reply. “Hmmm, maybe.” He sighs. “I tried to read, but the letters… they squirm around on the page and I can’t catch ‘em. Too fast.”

Oh yes, he’s in an interesting condition indeed. “It would serve you right were I to make you sign that contract.” Thorin says. “What were you thinking, wandering so close to the edge?”

“Wasn’t.” Bilbo turns his face away. “Wandering. Thinking. Either of those.”

Thorin frowns and deliberately steps on the urge to turn the Halfling back to facing him. This is not one of his nephews and Thorin is not allowed to manhandle him. “Were you pushed?” He asks, most carefully. “I was told you don’t remember.”

“I remember.” Thorin can see the muscles in Bilbo’s cheek constrict even though he can’t see the grimace that the hobbit is no doubt wearing. “Watch the others. It’s not safe.” He sags a little. “It’s not ever safe. Not for me. Not for you. Not for them.”

“Did an elf push you?” Thorin does reach out now to put a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder. The hobbit allows himself to be rolled over. “Are my people in danger?”

“No.” Bilbo inhales long and slow, dwelling on the sensation as one tends to when breathing is no longer automatic. He blinks sleepily at Thorin. “Not an elf. It was a wizard. A wizard pushed me and one caught me too. Different ones. Not Gandalf. Others. He was here earlier. The one who pushed. Put a hand on Ori’s shoulder. Couldn’t risk him… I should… I shouldn’t be…”

“Keep talking.” Thorin orders him. “Who is this wizard who would harm my company?”

“I don’t understand you anymore.” Bilbo sighs and his eyes flutter shut. “I used to. Thought I did.” He’s nodding off, but Thorin can’t bring himself to shake the hobbit back awake. “You’re different. Why did you change?”

“I am as I always have been.” Thorin replies helplessly. “I am a dwarf. We do not alter our character easily.”

“That…” Bilbo’s breathing starts to even out. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Chapter Text

This is probably a dream.

Bilbo is sitting on a bench in a starlit forest looking out onto the mirror surface of a pond surrounded by soft verdant grass. There is someone sitting next to him and he turns to her. “This is a dream.” He tells her.

“Perhaps.” Galadriel agrees and tucks a strand of her famous golden hair behind one ear. “Dreams are their own reality. Who is to say it is less valid than that of the waking world?”

“You are exactly as I remember you.” Bilbo sighs. “Beautiful and confusing.” Fortunately his announcement seems to amuse her and she presses a laughing kiss to his cheek.

“You, however, are looking better than I remember you.” Her smile fades. “My poor dear friend. You do not need to do this to yourself.” Her hand hovers over his waistcoat, which is made of fine silvery Elvish cloth and held together by silver leaf-shaped buttons. Her fingers graze over the place where Saruman stabbed him.

“Yes, I do.” Bilbo replies automatically. “I can’t not do it. Pain doesn’t last, but failure does.”

“That I know only too well.” She sighs. “You must be careful, Bilbo. You are not the only one in Middle Earth who was granted knowledge of their future. In all things there must be balance. You are an agent of the light. In order to send you back …compromises had to be made.”

“I met one of them.” Bilbo replies. “Saruman the White.”

“Yes.” Galadriel looks out into the starlit woods. “He will be a trial that you must face …among others, but know this, Bilbo Baggins.” She turns to look him directly in the eyes and all her years bear down on him like the weight of the universe. “You are not alone. There are others and they will reveal themselves to you.”

“Are you one of them?” Bilbo asks, searching her face for a clue …but she only shakes her head.

“No. All my business in life was done. I learned to live with all my mistakes. My life was long, but my years in exile from Valinor provided me…closure. I made peace with myself and now that means I cannot go back.” Galadriel lets her hand drop away from his shoulder. “What you are speaking to is not me. I lived a powerful life and my existence left an echo –one that will fade in time.”

“That is a vast shame.” Bilbo says. “I miss you and all those that I knew during my time in Rivendell.”

“You will know us again.” Galadriel promises him. “…but first you must live, Bilbo. That is your priority above the One Ring, even. You must survive. Take no more foolish chances with your life.” Her long strong finger close in the fabric of his shirt. “Stay with the dwarves, Bilbo. This you must promise me no matter what.”

“I don’t…” Bilbo gulps. “Lady Galadriel, if I stay… I want to stay with them. I want that more than anything, but the Ring will use that.” He draws a shuddering breath. “Isn’t that how it works? It will take my love of my friends and make a mockery of it to suit Sauron’s ends. If I go with them, if I go on their adventure, then I’ll want to use it!” This is his greatest fear and one he can barely articulate to himself. “We’ll be in danger and I will reason to myself that using the Ring is my only choice, but using it… If I use it then it will have power over me. I risk becoming another Gollum!”

Galadriel does not reassure him, but she does pull him into her scented embrace and it shocks him to his core –much the same as it did the first time she held him so as a friend and brother. “That is the war you must fight.” She tells him gravely. “I cannot tell you why and I cannot tell you how, but your battle will not be fought with swords or force of arms. Your weapon is your heart. Tend to it well and it will not fail you.”

“I don’t understand.” He looks up as the feel of arms around him begins to dissipate. “What is happening?”

“You are waking.” Galadriel’s voice sounds as though it is coming from far away even though she’s still mere inches away. “You have slept longer than you know.”

Bilbo wakes floundering in bed unsure of which direction is up. Someone presses a hand over his mouth and then yelps when he bites down on it.

“Shhh!” Someone hisses in the darkness ...someone whose voice Bilbo recognizes.

“…Fili?” He grunts and looks around as his eyes adjust to the lack of light. Turns out the hand he bit belongs to Kili who is still shaking the pain out of his fingers with a rueful expression. “Sorry.” He murmurs and Kili waves it off.

“Thorin is moving us out.” He hisses. “He sent us to fetch you. Gandalf was called to a big meeting of some kind and everyone’s attention is there. We won’t get another chance and he said… he said we couldn’t leave you here alone.”

“I… what?” Bilbo lets Kili hoist him to his feet. “I don’t know if I can…” He presses a hand against his side to test his stab wound only to find the region curiously without pain. “Let me visit the water closet.” He gulps.

“We have a little time.” Fili promises him. “Kili has your things and your hinny is stabled with ours.”

“I… yes, yes of course… just…” Bilbo still has to lean heavily on Fili, who escorts him to the tiny chamber and kindly leaves him alone once he’s situated. He can hear the boy standing outside listening no doubt just in case, which would be offensive if Bilbo weren’t so very grateful for it. He’s not entirely sure he won’t need a timely rescue if his legs give out under him.

Still, he peels up his night shirt and unwraps the bandages around his middle. The stab wounds are still there, but they’re shallow somehow. They look as though they’ve been healing for several months rather than a day or so. The rest of his torso is mottled with bruises, abrasions, and cuts, but his insides seem whole.

It appears as though Gandalf’s friend did rather more than persuade the walnut grove to catch Bilbo as he fell.

Bilbo rebinds his wounds and limps out of the water closet. Fili has his kit waiting and helps him dress without complaint or judgment. Even Thorin’s nephews have limits to their mischief, it seems.

They make it out of Elrond’s wing with Bilbo leaning heavily on Fili’s arm and Kili scouting up ahead to ensure the way ahead is clear before the slower part of their party moves into it. Bilbo knows that his presence makes for a tortuously slow pace, but the young dwarves neither seem to notice nor care.

Everyone else is waiting (ironically) in the same walnut grove that broke Bilbo’s fall. Apple lifts her head momentarily from her grazing when she scents him, but once she’s registered his presence she goes right back to her idle munching.

“This way, Mister Boggins.” Kili guides him away from Apple and up to one of the ponies.

“You know, I’d much rather …oh, bother.” Bilbo swears as he’s lifted up into the saddle in front of Bofur, who tucks a cloak around him.

“Don’t go tellin’ me you’re fit to right now.” The toymaker chides him. “If we had a choice we’d let you rest a week longer, but Thorin wants us out of elven territory and that scrawny ponce in the white dress has been hanging around our camp too much of late.”

“Him.” Bilbo makes a face as the party moves out as quietly as is possible for a group of dwarves and their accompanying mounts.

Bofur is quiet for a moment. “So it’s true then? He’s the one what pushed you?” He asks softly and Bilbo nods. “Ori’s been passing the word around that something was going on with that one and Thorin confirmed it. For such a little fellow you sure make large enemies.”

“That one came pre-made.” Bilbo grumbles.

“I think I can believe that.” Bofur says and pulls Bilbo down to lean against his chest. “Try and sleep a little, burglar. We’ve a long night ahead of us if we want to make it out of Elven patrolled lands before dawn.”

“When don’t we?” Still, Bilbo tries to find a comfortable position and eventually does manage to doze off a little.

Geographically, Rivendell butts directly up against the Misty Mountains and Elrond’s lands extend as far as the trees do. Having the ponies makes the trip a little easier than it would have been on foot and Thorin, who seems to have borrowed Bilbo’s map case without asking finds them a campsite carved into the side of the mountain just as the sun begins to creep up over the rocky horizon.

Bofur deposits Bilbo in a corner and props him up against Apple’s saddle. “I’m not a rag doll.” He fusses and swats at the dwarf’s hands, much to Bofur’s amusement.

“You might want to pretend to be one for a bit.” Bofur advises him. “You have plenty of healing left to do and we have a few days to wait before Gandalf can catch up with us. You might as well take the opportunity to heal as much as possible. Now stay there and Master Oin will be by to check you over.”

That, unfortunately, has the ring of good sense but if Bilbo was hoping for a spot of quiet then he hoped in vain because it was not long before both Fili and Kili took up posts on either side of him like a pair of particularly distressing bookends.

“Aw, don’t make that face, Mister Boggins.” Kili chuckles as he wiggles in-between Bilbo and the stone wall of their little campsite. “There’s no fire tonight in case we’ve been pursued. There are worse ways to keep warm than cuddling up with a handsome pair of dwarves, aye?”

“It’s ‘Baggins’, Kili.” Bilbo sighs. “And if you’re hoping for anything more than body heat then maybe you should look for a partner other than a half-dead hobbit.”

Fili reaches over Bilbo’s head to swat his brother upside the head without even looking. “Pay him no mind, Master Boggins.” He sighs. “He thinks he’s helping.”

“Ow! Fili!” Kili grumbles and subsides as Dwalin suddenly tromps over and looks down at him and his brother both.

“You two wouldn’t be about to start a scuffle, now would you?” He asks in a suspiciously sweet tone to be coming out of a dwarf who looks like he invented the concept of bloodshed and then went on to perfect it. He shrugs out of his weapons harness and drops the hilts of his axes, Grasper and Keeper, onto the ground at the boys’ feet. “I’ve had a long day and if anyone starts a fight then I just might feel like ending it for them.”

“Understood, mister Dwalin!” Kili squeaks, which is more than his brother manages. Fili just stares at Dwalin with huge eyes. “We’re just minding our burglar, is all.”

“The burglar is fully capable of minding himself.” Dwalin replies. “Get your arses over to the ponies and help Bofur and Bifur get them settled.” He doesn’t smile until the lads have scattered and then he shakes his head. “They weren’t wrong though. There’s no fire and the mountains run cold even once the sun is up.” He shrugs off his cloak and drops it in Bilbo’s lap. “Tis a loan for now. You’ll heal faster if your body’s not busy shivering to keep you warm.”

“My thanks then.” Bilbo wraps the cloak around himself with heavy limbs and promises himself he’ll return it later when he’s gotten enough steam back to go lay out his bedroll and the blankets in his knapsack however he drops off again in that awful sudden way that happens when you’re sick and your body needs the rest too badly to ease you into it. He wakes some hours later feeling a bit less bruised and warm enough that he feels comfortable wrestling out of his nest of borrowed cloaks.

The sun is up enough that Bombur’s lit a cookfire and those of the others who aren’t on watch are lolling around it. Bilbo’s limp is less pronounced as he goes to return Bofur and Dwalin’s cloaks to them.

“You’re welcome to it a bit longer.” Bofur tries to insist.

“I have some blankets in my roll.” Bilbo explains. “I would have fetched them last night, but I fell asleep too quickly. My apologies.” He turns to Dwalin. “To both of you.”

“Tis no matter.” Bofur waves it off. “Dwalin and I have brothers and cousins aplenty who shared their blankets with us. Come. Sit. Maybe you aren’t hungry now, but considering how long you’ve been asleep you will be soon.”

“A day isn’t long.” Bilbo huffs, but his stomach is perking up at the idea of food and he remembers Bombur’s cooking only with fondness.

“A day?” Bofur scoffs. “Try a week! The only food you’ve had is whatever your nurses could mince up fine and pour down your throat. Gandalf’s wizard friend worked some magic on you before bringing you inside to Lord Leaf Ears and it kept you sleeping. We were afraid we’d have to strap you to a travois to get you out of there.”

Bilbo frowns as he recalls Galadriel’s words in his dream. ‘You have slept longer than you know.’ Apparently he wasn’t dreaming, not entirely. No dream that features the Lady of the Golden Wood can be just a dream it seems.

…so what about her other warnings?

He looks out onto the peaceful easy expressions of his friends, both new and old who have adopted him again as surely as they did in that long ago lifetime.

‘Stay with the dwarves, Bilbo. This you must promise me no matter what.’ She said … or did she?

Was his dream a premonition given to him by the echo of an old friend? Or was that only a figment of his troubled mind telling him what he wanted to hear?

Chapter Text

They’ve been in the mountains for two days now and Thorin still feels the prickle of elfish eyes in-between his shoulder blades whenever he turns his back to the open air.

“Where is Gandalf?” He curses. “Blasted wizard.”

Balin rolls his eyes and gives him a chore whenever Thorin annoys him, which at least has the benefit of providing a distraction until Balin gives him a jar of ointment and points him towards where the burglar is struggling with his bandages.

Still, he goes.

“Bother and blast.” Bilbo mutters as he attempts to reach around his back to roll his bandages neatly and he yelps when Thorin takes the nascent roll out of his hand. “I… ah…Thorin?” He turns pale pink as Thorin raises a single brow, daring the hobbit to say anything. “Oh fine, do as you please. You always do.”

“I suppose I’m not so confusing after all.” Thorin replies and is rewarded by Bilbo’s flummoxed expression. He didn’t think the hobbit would remember their conversations in the sick room. “You need not look so skeptical. I have at least a little skill in healing.”

“As many fights as you’ve been in, I wouldn’t be surprised.” Bilbo sighs.

“How would you know?” Thorin asks. “I haven’t told you of any.”

“I… ah…” Bilbo blushes again. “I may have overheard Balin telling stories to your nephews some once or twice.”

“Azanulbizar, perhaps?” Thorin guesses, but has to clarify when Bilbo frowns at him in confusion. “The Battle of Dimrill Dale in your language.”

“Yes. That.” Bilbo agrees quickly. Too quickly.

“Funny. I don’t recall you being present for that conversation.” Thorin pins him with a look that always frightened confessions out of his younger siblings and nephews. “Unless you were spying on our camp that night.”

“In my defense…” Bilbo clears his throat. “…you settled down below my campsite. I fell asleep waiting out the rain and woke to voices.”

“Then you ran when you saw our wizard.” Thorin finishes for him. He’s been waiting for an opportunity to test this particular theory.

Bilbo blinks. “Why would say that?” He asks very slowly.

“You have no knowledge of my people, but I doubt you would have fled from my party.” Thorin explains and something eases in the hobbit’s countenance. Interesting. “Maybe you would have if you really were the cowardly aristocrat you claim to be, but you wouldn’t have stayed to listen to our talk if you were. Rather you left after Balin finished. Either you were curious or something else was closing in on you. Given that the wizard appeared in our camp later with a rain cape that you apparently abandoned in your haste to be gone, I must assume it was him.” He glances up to meet Bilbo’s eye. “Am I wrong?”

“…no.” The breath leaves Bilbo in a gust. He turns so that Thorin has his back once more. “It wasn’t anything personal, but Gandalf has a reputation in the Shire. When he appears then young Hobbit lads and lasses vanish from their homes off on an adventure. That he seemed to be following me implied that he had plans in play and I already had some of my own.” He shrugs. “As you can see, I was correct. Can you blame me?”

“Perhaps not.” Thorin shrugs even though the burglar can’t see it. “I still have need of you and my offer remains open.”

Bilbo is quiet for a time and they both work at the quiet task of unbinding his chest, trading off the bandage roll until the whole spool has been collected for Oin to boil clean and rewind. A week’s passage has turned Bilbo’s back and shoulders into a veritable rainbow of yellow, green, black, red, and violet. However, Thorin has seen worse and given that the hobbit broke no bones he will be well to travel when Gandalf finally deigns to show his face among them.

“I think these scrapes are ready to be bare to the air.” Thorin tests one of the worst with his fingertips just to be sure it won’t break open and bleed at the slightest provocation. It’s a service he’s provided for Dwalin and fellow warriors after skirmishes and the occasional bar brawl. He’s learned the hard way that such wounds can be deceptively fragile, but… “This isn’t a scratch.” He frowns as Bilbo immediately starts to squirm and then scruffs the hobbit out of habit to make him sit still as he inspects the puckered wound on Bilbo’s back. “How long have you had this?”

“The wizard Radagast tended to the worst of it.” Bilbo sighs and Thorin realizes he’s been holding the hobbit upright like a naughty kitten. He releases the hobbit and pulls his hands back into his lap. “He used a salve or something that hurt like fire, but was remarkably effective. I don’t think Lord Elrond realized that was a …recent acquisition.”

Thorin pinches the bridge of his nose as the implications begin to sink in. Apparently it wasn’t just that the burglar managed to get himself thrown off a tall building in the heart of an Elf Lord’s sanctuary, but he managed to get himself stabbed in the back first. “How are you still living?”

“Luck.” Bilbo shrugs. “…and probably the sins of a past life.”

“Usually it’s the other way around.” Thorin replies. “Turn. I’ll see your front now.”

“That, ah, isn’t… oh, bother!” Bilbo swears as Thorin loses what little patience he has, gets to his feet, and circles round to Bilbo’s other side. Bilbo claps a hand over the matching stab wound on his front and glares up at Thorin, daring him to say something about it.

“I should have guessed.” Thorin sighs. He has this hobbit’s measure now and it reminds him far too much other dwarves he has known; hiding injuries, hiding secrets, stubbornly insisting on going his own way no matter what the cost… “You’re a menace.”

“I don’t have to take that from you.” Bilbo grumbles, but subsides easily enough when Thorin threatens to put him in a headlock so apparently he will anyway.

“You’ll be good to travel when the wizard rejoins us.” Thorin tells him once he’s finished his examination. “Rest as much as you can between now and then.” He sits back on his heels and looks down at the hobbit who is not (and Thorin has to remind himself of this more and more as the days pass) a member of his company. Still, he feels like one of them and acts like it too. Perhaps that means as much or more than a signed contract. “If you conceal another injury from us then you will not like the consequences.” He declares and rises to his feet. “Am I understood?”

“Yes, yes.” Bilbo gives him a tired smile. “You’ve made your point.”

Thorin gives him a curt nod and turns to go.

He needs to review that contract and have Balin make the edits. There’s only a little time left.

Nori reports signs of pursuit on the fourth day. Bilbo is darning a sock nearby when the scout brings Thorin up into the gloaming light to point it out. Neither of them notice Bilbo’s proximity as he’s quiet and not immediately within sight.

Bilbo takes shameless advantage of the opportunity to listen in.

“It could just be a routine patrol.” Nori says as he points out the thin needle of smoke wending its way through the thick canopy of treetops that surround and conceal Rivendell. “Still, they’re awfully close to the tree line and it looks like they’re making for the mountain. Moreover, Balin has seen the signs of a spate of mad weather headed in our direction. We need to be higher and in a better position before it hits. There’re water lines on the inside of our cave that imply this area is prone to flash flooding.”

Thorin doesn’t make his announcement at once, but Bilbo isn’t surprised when he sets his bowl aside in the middle of their evening meal and standing.

“Gandalf has not appeared and it is no longer safe to remain where we are.” He looks at the faces of all the assembled company plus Bilbo. “We will need to retreat further into the mountains. If any of you have chores you must attend to in quiet, I suggest you see to it before tomorrow. We leave at dawn.” He turns to Bilbo. “Burglar. A moment of your time?”

“Yes?” Bilbo gets up and follows Thorin to the edge of the ring of light created by their little fire, which is (for once) shielded so that the light doesn’t travel too far. To his surprise, Thorin just thrusts a folded sheet of stitched vellum into his hands.

It’s the contract. Balin has literally cut out the portions that Bilbo objected to and sewed in replacement clauses… all of which are entirely unobjectionable. He reads the whole thing over again, of course, but Thorin waits without complaint or any sign of impatience beyond lighting his angular dwarrow-style pipe.

“You made provision for my task here in the mountains.” Bilbo clears his throat. “Ah… erm. Why?”

“I promised.” Thorin replies after a thoughtful silence that seems very unlike the loquacious and impatient dwarf Bilbo remembers. “Beyond that …you intrigue me. Gandalf made it clear we would find no better thief in the business, but I find myself doubting that that’s all you are. ‘Burglar’ seems an insufficient word, but I’ve realized that we need more than a mere thief to fulfill our goal. We need you, Master Baggins, whatever it is that you are.”

Bilbo covers his blush with a well-timed cough and uses it as an excuse to scrub at his face with his hands. “You know, you still haven’t told me exactly what it is you’re hiring me for.”

Thorin goes silent and stares away from Bilbo, out into rocky gully below their camp. Bilbo braces himself for a lustful tale of gold and revenge and all those seemingly romantic notions that drew him out his door that first time before he understood what hollow motivations they were.

“My people live in the Blue Mountains outside your Shire and have done so for a span of nearly fifty years.” Thorin says at last. “It is a peaceful life and we are able to feed our children… but Ered Luin is not a plentiful land. There is copper there and coal, but not enough to secure the future of an entire clan of dwarves. The mines provide for us for now, but they will play out within a single generation. Our settlement in the Blue Mountains is a stopgap measure at best.” He taps out his pipe against the heel of his boot. “Before we settled, we were a landless folk and wandered the surface as gypsies laboring in human settlements for whatever scraps that Men would throw to us… but before that we dwelt within the Erebor, the fortress city founded by my ancestors when we were driven out of ancient city of Khazad Dum –called Moria by the elves.”

Bilbo doesn’t say anything, but he cannot suppress a shudder. Truth be told, his memories of the end of his old life are a little dim and tend to fade in and out –due to Bilbo’s advanced age, he supposes. Still, he remembers Frodo’s tale of the Balrog hibernating within the mines of the Black Chasm where Balin may one day be king …and where Gandalf may one day die.

It seems Thorin’s line has a history of being driven away from their homes by ancient and terrible monsters.

“Erebor was carved out of the living stone inside of the Lonely Mountain on the other side of the Mist Mountain range.” Thorin continues. “Time and again it has been a refuge to Durin’s Folk, called ‘Longbeards’ by some. The mines there are rich with gems and veins of gold and ten generations of my people had yet to even scratch the surface of the wealth our mountain had to offer. An entire settlement of men lived solely on the trade brought in by our smiths and artisans, but history will still call us greedy and blame the dragon upon us.”

Bilbo remains silent because …well, what can he say?

Thorin eyes him speculatively, waiting for a reaction that won’t come and Bilbo makes a little ‘go on’ gesture.

“The rest, you can guess. Those inside the mountain perished unless they were near the anterior trade gates. I was with the first time of defense and only a handful of us made it out alive. I evacuated my grandfather and father… and we fled.” He grimaces. “For a century we wandered. My grandfather abandoned our people, leaving my father in his place. Eventually we received word that he had been killed by the Orcs infesting Mount Gundabad, a place once sacred to my people. My father could not bear the insult and gather the other clans under our banner. We took the battle to Dimrill Dale where we were eventually victorious… for a given value of ‘victory’. Our dead were beyond counting and my father stood up before the last Dwarf Kings of Middle Earth and tried to rally them into following the Orcs into old Khazad Dum. They denied him …and perhaps they were correct to do so. My cousin, Dain, made a scouting expedition into the gates of the abandoned city and what he saw there does not bear recounting. I do not believe that if we followed the Orcs into the mountains that we would have found many alive… or lived long enough to find them ourselves. Durin’s Folk lost the respect of the assembled clans that day.”

Thorin turns and begins to pace restlessly back and forth in the way Bilbo has begun to recognize as a habit of his when his distress has become too much to hold inside. “My father vanished soon after, taking with him the ring of power that was passed down through our line. Whatever power and respect my people possessed was gone even among our own kind. There are portents that indicate that the time has come for us to reclaim our lost mountain; to go home at last and take it back from the dragon who usurped it from us, but our reduced circumstances mean that my company must do so alone. The other clans will not be dragged into another slaughter for the sake of Durin’s Folk. So we fourteen must do via stealth what seven hundred could not do through force of arms. We must find a way to kill the dragon and hold the mountain until my people can follow us from Ered Luin.”

“…and this is why you need a burglar?” Bilbo asks, trying not to frown. There’s something… something odd about this and it’s tugging at the corners of his mind. The Thorin he knew liked the Lonely Mountain indeed once he had it, but retaking it had never really been his goal. From what Bilbo remembers, Thorin would have been very young when Smaug attacked and had been out hunting on the day it happened. Yet here Thorin is standing before Bilbo saying that he was part of the defense –and judging by the shadows in his eyes when he speaks of it, Bilbo would never doubt him.

In his first life Bilbo had been hired to rob Smaug’s horde –never to help slay him, but things have changed yet again. The gold seems almost tangential to Thorin’s real goal.

“No.” Thorin halts his prowling. “A thief would do, perhaps. I thought a thief would have the skills I require, but it is not a thief I need. I need someone clever, small, and blessed with luck who does not fear the darkness or the monsters that hide in it. I need one who will survive against the odds. If that makes you a burglar then a burglar is what I must have, but I will hire none other than you.” He does not smile, nor does he look particularly pleased by this turn of events. “I don’t know why I trust you, but it seems I do. I do not trust easily or lightly and I will repay betrayal ten-fold. Sign the contract, Burglar Baggins. Your worries will be our worries. No one in my company is ever on their own.”

‘Stay with the dwarves.’ Galadriel had said and Bilbo wants to. More than anything else he feels that he is in the right place doing exactly what it is he ought to be doing.

‘Perhaps,’ Bilbo thinks as he tilts the folded contract back and forth in his hands. ‘it is time to start listening to my instincts.’

“I’m going to need a pen.” He says at last. “…and probably a drink of that foul brandy you hide in your pocket.”

Thorin’s brows fly up into his hairline and he claps a hand onto his breast pocket, as if checking that his secret flask is still there. He narrows his eyes with a sharp smile as he pulls it out and pops the lid. “A toast then.” He takes a drink and then holds it out Bilbo.

“It’ll be an adventure.” Bilbo agrees and accepts the flask.

Chapter Text

An adventure it is indeed and sadly isn’t much different from the way things went in Bilbo’s original life. There are, after all, only so many ways one can tramp through a mountain pass, but they make better time than they did before due in part to Bilbo’s maps and the weather is only just starting to turn awful by the time they reach a very familiar cave.

Their pursuit seems to have broken off for good …or has gotten skilled enough at hiding their presence in the mountains that Nori cannot spot a sign of them.

“Check the back of the cave. These places are usually occupied.” Thorin directs his nephews inside the cave, which has no business being as dry and sandy as it is. Bilbo steps inside after them only to be halted by Oin’s hand on his shoulder.

“The lads know their business.” He says. “Off to the side. I want to see under your shirt.”

“I’m quite well.” Bilbo grumps, shooting a nervous look behind him. “The weather is turning very bad, isn’t it?”

“Aye, that it is. Thankfully, we’ve shelter in which to wait it out.” Oin jostles Bilbo out of the common way and spends some time clucking over his back and sides. He’s been watching Bilbo for signs of a cracked rib ever since they left Rivendell and anytime Bilbo gets the least bit bumped around, he can look forward to being stripped from the waist up at the first available opportunity. “Don’t give me that look. A broken rib can be driven straight into your lung and no herb craft on my part will save you as you drown in your own blood. A fall such as you had must have fractured at least one of them now we must be vigilant.”

“I don’t like this cave.” Bilbo claps a hand over his mouth instantly mortified, but Oin just sits back on his heels.

“And what do you mislike about it, Master Hobbit? Tis dry, safe, and convenient…” However, Oin’s eyebrows start to knit even as he speaks and he begins to look around as well taking in the cave’s inviting interior. “Aye, I begin to see your point.”

“It’s clear all the way to the back.” Kili pops in from the deepest recesses of the cave. “No animal scat or bones to be found. Ah, what are you doing there, Master Burglar?

“Would you please not call me that?” Bilbo replies absently as he scuffs at the sandy floor with his foot. Frankly, he doesn’t remember just where they were when the goblins took them. It was dark and everyone had been woken up from a deep sleep. Maybe they were raided or maybe they fell, but the sand seems a good place to start. After all, it’s so good at covering things up. He’s rewarded when he uncovers the broad flat slate bottom of the miniature sand pit and the jagged seam braced with rusty metal rivets running its length.

“What is Durin’s name is that?” Bofur whistles and crouches down on the rim of the trap.

“Nothing natural.” Bilbo replies and lets Dwalin drag him up out of it by the back of his shirt.

“Careful.” The old warrior rumbles. “Goblins used to keep traps in the Misty Mountains in the bad old days before their numbers were reduced at Azanulbizar. Used to be you couldn’t travel through these parts. The lizard skins would catch unwary travelers like so and sell those they could on as slaves. What they couldn’t sell they ate.”

“Any indication that this one is still being minded?” Thorin comes in from inspecting the deep parts of the cave with Fili.

“I think so.” Bilbo says slowly because he can’t say how he knows for sure. Blast and double blast. They’ve made too good time. Gandalf was supposed to BE here with them when the goblins attacked. “The trap door doesn’t have a perfect seam. Someone’s been here recently to top off the sand that trickles through.”

“Then we move on.” Thorin sighs, but just as he does there’s a crash of thunder from outside and a grinding echo that shakes the very wall. “GET DOWN. AVALANCHE!”

However, those dwarves still outside come barreling in driving the ponies ahead of them. The ponies, being surefooted little things, part around the trap entrance and huddle against the deepest interior of the cave near the rear wall.

“Stone giants!” Gloin huffs, shoving Bifur and Ori in ahead of him. “There’s some kind of battle going on in the storm!”

“Let me see.” Bilbo scurries ahead of Thorin and Dwalin, managing to poke his head out between their two substantial bodies.

Outside the stone giants are dancing their painfully slow waltz of destruction, shattering eachother into pieces only to reform out of the cliff sides. Thorin shoves both Bilbo and Dwalin back as a boulder comes hurtling towards them.

“Those bastards are playing ball out there!” Dwalin roars. “That’s not a battle, it’s a GAME.”

“It looks like we’re pinned down for the moment.” Thorin kicks some rubble out of his way. “We’ll eat and sleep in shifts tonight. Everyone stay off that damned sunken floor. They’ll not try anything during daylight hours, but it’s best to be sure.”

Bilbo takes a surreptitious look at Sting’s blade, which is still dull. “We’re safe for now.” He says. “Bombur should put together some food and we should all rest while we know there are no goblins about.”

Fili gives Bilbo an odd look. “How could you possible know that?”

“The same way your uncle would.” Bilbo frowns and unsheathes Sting a bit. “I picked up this dagger from the same cache where he and Gandalf took their blades. They were made to be used against orcs and goblins. They shine when any are near.”

“Handy, that!” Fili whistles appreciatively and turns to his Uncle, only to draw up short when he sees Thorin frowning at Bilbo.

“How did you come to know this?” Thorin asks, one hand on Orcrist’s hilt.

“I was sitting with Lord Elrond’s sons.” Bilbo blinks. Had Elrond not told Thorin that his sword was made for the ancient wars between Elves and Orcs? “They inspected my weapon for me. Did not their father do the same for you?”

“Not to that extent it seems.” Thorin grumbles as he brushes past. He drops a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder in a brief ‘thank you’ as he goes.

Bilbo follows him. “Thorin, a word?” He asks softly.

Thorin cocks an impressive black eyebrow at him, but beckons him over to where the ponies are shuffling about. “Speak while I check their hooves.” He says.

“If we’re attacked, I need to go down into Goblin Town.” Bilbo says it straight out and suffers under Thorin’s instant glare.

“Out of the question.” He says flat out. “It’s a death sentence.”

“The… person I’m looking for lives below the goblin settlement inside the mountain range.” Bilbo kneels down to stay on a level with Thorin. “It’s not a goblin, but… well. I’m not looking for any wholesome creature either.”

“If your creature lived in proximity to goblins then I doubt it lives any longer.” Thorin replies. “This is your business? Monster hunting in the mountains?”

“It lives yet.” Bilbo makes a face. “It…he eats the goblins. From what I understand, he’s nearly five hundred years old and at one point he may have been a hobbit.”

“That’s impossible.” Thorin produces a hoof pick from his pocket and sets about cleaning Minty’s hooves. She’s a placid nag and well-used to Thorin’s obsessive tendencies towards her feet so she doesn’t balk or pull at him as he works. “Your kind live a century plus a decade or so if you’re lucky. No hobbit ever lived so long.”

“I said that he was a hobbit.” Bilbo sighs. “Not that he still is. Something changed him and I would like to know what… and if there is any danger of it happening again.”

“You don’t pick any easy tasks, burglar.” Thorin frowns as he ousts a stone from the hollow of Minty’s hoof. “I swore to you that you would not go into danger alone …but neither can I risk my kin in such a way.”

“You don’t need to!” Bilbo says quickly. “I always meant to go alone!”

“That’s hardly reassuring!” Thorin snorts.

“Look, there is a back gate to Goblin Town. I will mark it for you on one of my maps.” Bilbo grasps his knees, willing Thorin to agree. “Goblins are cowardly things. They aren’t like the Orcs we encountered on the High Moor. They’re smaller and stunted by close living. If they don’t have the advantage from the beginning they won’t stay and fight. You can wait out the storm here, repel any raid that strikes, and then move on. The pass will put you down near where I’ll be coming out.”

“This plan is predicated upon me being foolish enough to let one of my people go into a goblin warren alone.” Thorin points the hoof pick at Bilbo. “If we are attacked then we fight and move on. This back gate of yours is more promising if you absolutely must get into the warren.”

It’s also heavily guarded and out in the open on a plateau where the warg packs roam, which is more to the point but Bilbo can’t say that because how would he know?

“Perhaps.” Bilbo says and thinks furiously. It’s true that he doesn’t much care for the idea of jumping feet first into a goblin trap, but he also doesn’t remember the inside of the mountain well enough to find his way down to Gollum’s subterranean lake. Both options read as very elaborate suicide attempts… especially without Gandalf present.

Where oh where has that wizard gotten off to?

“Peace, burglar.” Thorin says and bends his dark head back down to face his task. “All will be well.”

“I’d feel better if Gandalf would hurry up and show his face.” Is Bilbo’s very truthful reply.

“Aye.” Thorin agrees. “So would we all.”

They eat a cold dinner that night of hardtack, dried fish, and some preserved fruit. They bunk down in shifts away from the trap door and something that looks to be a false wall in the rear of the cave. Outside the storm rages on with the stone giants chasing and tackling one another in their seemingly endless game. Bilbo does not sleep nor does Thorin or Bofur, although Thorin makes a better pretense of it than either of them.

Bofur doesn’t even pretend to sleep, but rather chooses to sit up with his mattock balanced over his knees while Bifur and Bombur rest. It’s even odds whether they’re truly asleep or just cat-napping and if they are, Bilbo can’t blame them. He too is sitting out in the dubious light of the cave entrance with Sting in his lap popped half out of its sheath so that the glow (when it inevitably comes) attracts instant attention.

“How does it look outside?” Bofur asks somewhere around midnight. Things had quieted down a bit save the rain, but the crash of thunder blends in with the sound of stone bodies hitting the mountainside and they’re both getting louder.

“I think the game is drifting back this way.” Bilbo says and wonders if his face looks as pinched as his voice sounds. He can see the vague shape of the boulder they’re using as a ball in the haze of the rain. One of the giants fumbles it and it goes flying… straight towards their little cave. “Blast!”

Bilbo leaps to his feet and bolts further inside just in time to avoid being pelted with debris when it impacts with the stone face of the mountain outside their cave. The shock sends him stumbling and rolling forward, but fortunately he lands on a relatively smooth patch of ground. He sits up, spitting out sand, and scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve.

“Burglar.” Thorin’s voice cracks through the unholy racket going on outside.

Bilbo’s blindly questing hand skitters across Sting’s sheath and closes around it. He pulls his weapon close and blinks down at the watery blue glow shining back up at him.

“Bilbo.” Thorin is closer perched on the edge of something and leaning forward with his arm outstretched. “Take my hand. Do it now.”

Bofur is by his side and has his mattock extended like he’s trying to loop it through the back of Bilbo’s coat.

Wait.

Bilbo’s stomach turns sour as he looks down and realizes exactly where he landed: right in the middle of the goblin’s trap door. He lurches forward just as Sting’s glow takes on the brilliant white hot sheen of a captured star and a dull shake sounds somewhere underneath him.

He has just enough time to look up, meet the agonized expressions written across the faces of his friends, and say; “Don’t even think about it!” before the ground drops out from underneath him.

Chapter Text

The false floor drops Bilbo into a sloping tunnel angled at a sheer drop that leave him tumbling head over feet until it bottoms out slightly and his free hand catches onto a crevice that brings him to a bone-breaking halt.

He clings to the wall, braced for more bodies to come falling down the hole or for bodies to come up from the bottom armed with maces studded with crystal shards and the teeth of other dead goblins. He can hear their enraged screams and shrieking all around him, but nothing comes into the tunnel looking for him.

Once his heart stops hammering in his chest, Bilbo carefully disengages from the wall and leans back to see if he can possibly climb back up the way he came. The tunnel has a steep incline and walls that have been ground down more or less smooth. There’s no purchase there to be found.

“You lot had better be safe up there.” Bilbo mutters direly, but the fact of the matter is that they’re likely better off than he is. They’re well-armed, together, and braced for an attack. He’s alone, armed with a long dagger, and potentially facing an entire army of goblins down here.

…and the Ring.

He winces as the sound of clashing metal and roar of dwarrow voices in their secret guttural language echoes down the hole. The goblins must have used that false wall to stage their raid when the hole failed to produce any victims. He holds still, listening, and breathes out when he fails to hear screams of pain or fear that aren’t of the shrill goblin variety.

He breathes in, takes stock, and exhales. There’s no going back up the hole. The only way out is to go down to the goblins, to the lake, and to Gollum.

The hole turns out to be more of a tunnel towards the bottom. Goblins never had a reputation for being great artisans or craftspeople, but apparently they’re both cunning and persistent when it comes to their traps. The tunnel shows signs of having been carved out of the stone, probably enlarged from some kind of natural formation. One of the dwarves would know.

Bilbo bites down on that thought as he reaches the end of his tunnel and carefully peeks over the edge.

The tunnel feeds out into some kind of deranged basket designed to catch whoever tumbles through. The immediate area is abandoned for now. Whoever was watching the basket has probably run off to join the fight upstairs. He drops heavily into the basket and freezes waiting to hear if he’s been seen. There’s nothing.

His heart is lodged in his throat as he creeps over the leathery edge of the basket, which is constructed of equal parts bones, leather, and other things that look like they used to be part of some living creature.

The goblin’s realm looks like an enormous limestone cavern comprised of rickety ladders lashed together with rotten hemp over deadly deep drops all lit by tiny bone torches dipped in pitch.

‘This is…’ Bilbo squints around himself and –yes. He does recognize the area, if only vaguely. ‘Over there is the steps that the goblin raiding party drove us down after they captured us. They lead down to …the rope bridge to the Great Goblin’s throne and I fell not far from there.’

Bilbo hops over the edge of the basket and lands with a soft scuffle in the sand that stands in a ring around, probably leftover from the other times the trap has been triggered which no goblin would ever bother with cleaning up. He darts into the shadows and they wrap around him like a blanket. Young Hobbits don’t feel the safety of darkness the way the elderly do, but young Hobbits are creatures of the sun and the good earth. The old have more need of the night, even those that are only old in spirit.

Unfortunately a Hobbit’s natural magic works in tandem with the environment and this mountain has no cause to either love or hate his kind. It has been in the possession of things that hunt for far too long. Even before the Goblins there were the Skinchangers, who were Man-like creatures born with two skins. Even though they did not love the taste of blood they were still jealous of their territory and this is the mountain that bore them. It is not generous to intruders.

A bone snaps under Bilbo’s heel and he freezes as that undefinable sense of security evaporates around him and a goblin springs out from behind a pile of rags and midden where it presumably had snuck away from the raiding party to steal a nap.

“Bugger!” Bilbo jumps back as it takes a swipe at him. It is squat and long in the arm with powerful little legs that let it spring off the walls and jutting stones around him, but it has stunted brainpan and what appears to be little to no spatial reckoning because it drives Bilbo backwards with vicious intent straight to the edge of the overhang behind them. Bilbo parries its attacks as best he can, but he’s steadily driven back and back and back until he puts a foot down –only to meet empty air.

In a way he’s almost glad he didn’t have to jump or climb down, that the choice of where to fall was taken from him, and that his options are limited to bracing himself so that he doesn’t bite through his tongue when they hit ground.

The goblin hits rock bottom a few seconds before Bilbo with a crack and a squeal. Bilbo’s fall is broken briefly by many leathery somethings that part under him and spring back into place above him. The impact drives the breath from his lungs even though his head and part of his back is cushioned by a soft something that is hopefully crushed mushrooms and not whatever it is that the mushrooms found to grow in down here.

He lays there, stunned, as he stares at the goblin who landed on hard stone. Contrary to all logic, it’s still alive albeit barely conscious. Hobbits and goblins are similar in some ways; they favor dwellings below ground, which means that they don’t lose their sense of direction easily and recover very well from long drops...which is just as well otherwise Bilbo would have never survived his fall in Rivendell. Even so, a fall like that should have broken the goblin’s back and may yet have. There’s no way to tell and Bilbo refuses to move until he knows if it can as well.

…then there comes an awful and familiar voice muttering softly to itself in an indistinct rolling cadence.

Bilbo’s stomach clenches again and he holds as still as he knows how as the most prevalent figure of his nightmares comes creeping into the little pocket of stone and mushrooms to investigate the fallen goblin.

The goblin wakes to the sound of Gollum’s mutters and attempts to attack, but its legs fail to respond; paralyzed, no doubt, from the fall. Gollum hisses and bludgeons it with a stone before dragging it away further into the underground cavern housing its lake. Gollum bumps up against the cave wall where the stone wall ends briefly as it jostles the stunned goblin past and a tiny something that glitters gold in the poor light slips out of Gollum’s meager loincloth to fall onto the ground.

Bilbo’s fingers curl in the substrate underneath him as a wave of pure longing breaks over him. He wants to run to jump up and rescue the ring from the ground, to take it far away from here, and… and…

‘NO.’ Bilbo bites his tongue for good measure and uses the pain to center himself, to separate his actual wants from the artificial ones brought on by the ghostly fingers already plucking at his strings. ‘Not twice.’ He tells the Ring in his mind. ‘You don’t get me twice.’

Gollum’s muttering turns into a gruesome, yet cheerful little song punctuated by the rhythmic bashing of stone against tough goblin skull and it echoes through the entire cavern. Bilbo creeps out of the mushroom patch and roots around until he finds Sting. The blade is still glowing and he uses it to guide him to where the One Ring fell.

It glitters silver in Sting’s blue-white light and Bilbo roots in his pocket for one of his handkerchiefs. The light cuts out just as he finds one and that must mean that the goblin is finally dead. Poor damned creature.

Bilbo uses the point of his blade to flip the Ring onto his best silk handkerchief and ties it up in a little parcel that he covers with another and then another until he’s positive that there is no way for the Ring to escape should it decide to abandon him and try its luck with another bearer. The lack of contact between him and the evil thing muffles its ‘sound’ in his head, but even so it still feels far too good when he slips it back into his waistcoat pocket. Some traitorous part of him feels the world slot back into its proper order.

Now…for the problem of how to get out.

He remembers the route out of Gollum’s cave better than he ought. It’s partly born of obsessively running the route in his memory to creep it fresh for his memoirs and also because he often runs that same route in his nightmares.

Bilbo swallows down the acid that rises in his throat.

Using the Ring isn’t an option. He wants to use it and very badly, which is more than enough reason not to. Moreover, he has a vague idea that Sauron’s forces could tell when Frodo used in on the route to Mordor. Before Rivendell, Bilbo had believed himself to be the only one in Middle Earth with his unique… condition, but between Saruman’s attack on him in Elrond’s home and that dream of the Lady Galadriel he can no longer assume that he’s protected through anonymity.

Gollum is occupied with its prey when Bilbo creeps out of the mushroom grotto. It’s having a debate with itself one side upset and bored of goblin meat, the other side utterly without empathy in the face of starvation. Even so, that voice is the same; equal parts guttural and shrill. It’s as warm and welcoming as fingernails drawn across a slate.

Almost every part of Bilbo balks at drawing his blade on Gollum, creeping up behind it, and slitting it throat –not out of pity. There is very little pity left in him for the wretched creature –not when he knows that one day it may threaten his nephew. Rather, he balks at anything that smacks of killing for the One Ring.

In those days following the War of the Ring during the year before Bilbo’s health failed all together, Bilbo and Gandalf spent much time together. Gandalf, Bilbo thinks, was feeling his age as he never did before. Death had marked him and his ancient quest was over. His end was near.

He and Bilbo were old friend and close, but more than that they both stood in the same twilight and felt the same need to review the contents of their lives in order to enter that final gentle night with all their days wrapped around them like a cloak.

During those days, Gandalf shared with Bilbo the history of the Ring and its bearers. He spoke of Isildur and then Smeagol who became Gollum. He spoke of their lives and of those they murdered for want of the Ring.

Bilbo has no desire to join their ranks no matter how ironic or appropriate an end it would be for Gollum. Part of him fears that the act of killing for the One Ring would doom him to become its slave.

He creeps out onto the lakeshore hugging the wall and keeping low. He keeps one eye trained on Gollum perched on his stone and the other open for the little side passage that led into the goblin warren. However Hobbit feet are not clever below ground or in the deepest darkness and just as before the Mountain betrays him. He trips over a cleft in the stone floor and stumbles forward. When he staggers back upright he immediately looks to Gollum’s perch… only to find that he’s gone.

Gollum is quick as a fish in the water even with his little boat and every bit as silent. Bilbo puts his back to the wall and hauls Sting out of its sheath once more.

“Bless us and splash us…” Gollum’s voice echoes through the cavern, a natural amphitheater enhanced by the waters of the lake. “Sss, ssss, Gollum. Gollum.” Its wet cough sounds close and Bilbo turns to find it crouched on the shore to his left side.

“Stand back.” Bilbo warns it because he’s never been able to think of Gollum as a ‘he’. Hobbits do not murder their own not even a strange and cagey bunch such as the descendants of the Stoors. “You have a supper and no need of me. I have a blade and no real desire to harm you, but I will if you force me and your goblin will go to waste.”

“A clever mouth it has, my precious.” Gollum mutters to itself like it’s not entirely sure Bilbo can hear it. “…but what is it?”

“What I am is no concern of yours.” Bilbo tells it and brandishes his weapon to back it up a little.

“Little thing with hairy feets.” Gollum walks half on its hands and half on its feet hopping and scuttling. It’s rail thin and has almost no flesh on its bones at all. How could it have ever been anything like him? No Hobbit could ever be so thin without dying long beforehand. “It has a blade, my precious, a nasty biting sword. It says that we should go, but it shakes so. Is it afraid? Sss, yes, precious. We thinks it is.”

“Perhaps, but not so afraid that you can kill me as you please.” Bilbo tracks Gollum’s movements, waiting to see it crouch before it pounces.

“We have eaten and have a little squeaker laid aside.” Gollum hisses. It’s thinking out loud. “Are we hungry, my precious? We do not know. It is fat and slow and clumsy, but has teeth. Yes, it has a large tooth.”

“Away with you!” Bilbo takes a swipe at Gollum, making him back away further. The passage isn’t far off. It’s possible that he could crab walk there and keep Gollum at bay. It won’t venture too close to the goblin’s passages nor to the light.

“Nasty thing.” Gollum growls, but its grizzling is even and confused. “Nasty, nasty… why do we know it, precious? Why is it familiar to us?”

Oh no.

“Precious.” It grumbles, pacing back and forth. “My precious, my birthday… present…” Its eyes snap open wide and focus on Bilbo like they hadn’t before and one word emerges from Gollum’s mouth laden with all the hatred it could possibly muster. “Baggins.”

Gollum leaps upon him with a piercing shriek and Bilbo goes over backwards wrestling kicking and biting because Gollum is too close and full of an awful strength for his blade to do him much good beyond keeps his attacker’s spindly fingers away from his throat.

“BAGGINS!” Gollum snarls. “It steals from us! We knows it! It will not steal again!”

Bilbo has led a long life full of adventure and close scrapes that hardened him into something not quite a Hobbit yet not really anything else either, but that life is not this life. Bilbo is still soft and healing from too much too soon. The things he knows are all in his head. His hands have not learned them yet. It makes him slow on the draw and Gollum gets his hands around Bilbo’s throat.

“We’ll squeeze it, precious.” Gollum hisses its victory as Bilbo kicks and thrashes underneath it. “Squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until Baggins is no more.”

Blackness rings around the edges of Bilbo’s vision and his hands automatically seek out his pocket, seeking the ring, but are foiled by the handkerchiefs tied around it with knots too clever for him to get past while under attack.

“Khazad ai-menu!” A guttural voice snarls in the darkness and Gollum is lifted bodily off of Bilbo. He clings –oh, how he clings to his grip on Bilbo’s throat dragging him up and after. Something crashed in-between them and Bilbo thinks it might be an iron buckler. Gollum screams and Bilbo drops back to the ground gasping for breath.

Gollum is past words and only shrieks its defiance at Bilbo’s rescuer. It surges forward one more time and the dwarf side-steps so it misses him. “Baruk Khazad!” The dwarf bellows as his axe comes crashing down… directly onto Gollum’s unprotected head.

Bilbo jerks his gaze away two seconds too late to miss his own personal demon being split in two. Warm blood splatters his face and he reaches up to wipe it away without thinking. His hands come away covered in thick blood that looks black in this bad light.

Hands close around his shoulders and drag him upright. “Show me ye live!” The stranger demands patting Bilbo all over in an attempt to ascertain his state of health. His voice isn’t one Bilbo recognizes … isn’t it? He sounds a bit like Gloin, but Bilbo is quite certain he’d be able to see Gloin’s magnificent beard even all the way down here; no Gloin, but someone who reminds Bilbo of that dwarf.

His memory suddenly presents him with an image of Gloin among the number of dwarves that Erebor sent to Imladris and with him…

“…Gimli?” He croaks.

“None other!” Gimli’s teeth flash white. He looks bizarre without a beard and it occurs to Bilbo that he looks even younger than Kili. “Ye remember me!” He gives Bilbo a happy shake. “This is good! Good!”

Gimli, son of Gloin, and a member of the Fellowship of the Ring; of course he would be one of the ones who were sent back.

“We have to leave.” Bilbo’s voice is ruined again and it’s a bit hard to breath, but Gimli shows no signs of letting Bilbo walk unaided. “The others were attacked. They know to meet me at the back door, but…”

“They’re all well.” Gimli replies, much to his surprise. “I saw them attacked, but old Gandalf appeared and they drove off the goblins. I’ve been following you these past few weeks and I passed them up in the storm. I’ve heard this story so many times from me Da, I knew where your back door would be. Killed the guards and snuck in here.”

“However you came to be here, you’re a welcome sight.” Bilbo pauses to cough. “Where are the rest?”

“Not far behind and out in the open.” Gimli replies, grim as anything. “I saw signs of a warg pack in the area. One dwarf can slip their notice easily enough, but Da’s company are sure to draw their attention.”

“Then we need to hurry.” Bilbo grunts in surprise as Gimli pulls his arm over one shoulder. “I can walk!” He protests.

“Aye?” Gimli says. “Then save it for later, just in case things keep going the way they did before. The troubles haven’t passed yet.”