"Then Bard drew his bow-string to his ear."
Independent RP Account Versed in Middle-Earth (12/29/13)
…and are willing to share it with people that want to get to know you
middle-earth meme: [2/5 quotes]
J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales
My adventure ends here.
Go home. Be a good king.
Farewell.Reverse BotFA ending - because the actual one wasn’t painful enough:
what if Bilbo died instead of Thorin.
(I hope you don’t mind, but a friend of mine mentioned this picture to me on skype and I …sort of ended up writing a fic about it.)
What is left of the company decide to bear him back to Bag End themselves, like an extended funeral march. The Elven King grants them permission through Mirkwood and Beorn keeps them safe back to the Carrock. Perhaps the eagles help. Then Radaghast offers them his sled, back through the Wilderlands.
And Elrond pays his respects, sends his guard from Rivendell to guide them.
He heard, of course, through Gandalf.
And he wants to pay his respects, and he does so, to the newly crowned king under the mountain, and lays a heavy hand on the hobbit’s brow.
“A pity,” he says, in a tone so mournful that even the dwarves listen without bristling. their heads bowed and their arms clasped in mourning. “That it should come at so high a price.”
“Rest here,” he offers them. But Thorin politely refuses. They have been away for far too long and it is time they returned the hobbit to his home.
And they do, eventually. Return him.
The hobbits are all about and trying to auction off bilbo’s belongings, as is their wont, but they all stop and stare in fright when this dirge of dwarves comes barreling through, a bier on their shoulders, and Bilbo Baggins laying prone atop it.
It stays Mungo’s tongue, and one look from Thorin sends the rest of the hobbits running.
Old Gaffer Gamgee pokes his head out the door to see what all the fuss is about and eventually picks his way over, and cries his little heart out and thanks the dwarves, ever so much, for bringing him back, for all the trouble it must have been.
“It was no trouble,” says Bofur, quietly.
“Aye,” Dwalin’s voice a rumble beside him, his tattooed head bowed. “It was an honor.”
“Master Baggins—Bilbo helped us to reclaim our home,” Thorin’s voice is quiet, reverent. “It is only right he should be returned to his.”
Someone, Fili or Kili, is the one to ask the question, sometime later. voices soft, apologetic, necessary.
“Where should we bury him?”
“Oh, I think the garden would be best,” Old Gaffer Gamgee offers, after a moment of thought. “He always did have the most splendid garden.”
Thorin, clearly, was thinking the same
And, well you know how that goes.
He buries Bilbo in the mythril shirt with Sting placed on his breast, and, hardly an after thought, as it’s been closed in his palm for half the journey, he gently pries open stiff fingers to press the acorn into Bilbo’s palm and close his hand around it.
And then, after all the dwarves and some hobbits have had their chance to say farewell, there is Thorin again, pacing the ground beside the bier.
It’s dark but the night is clear; a sky of stars. the world smells green and new despite the season and it strikes Thorin that it’s been almost exactly a year, to the day, that he’d first come here.
How much has changed. How much he has changed, and who to thank for it.
And he bends low over the body to press his lips to Bilbo’s forehead in farewell, one hand tangled affectionately in curly hair. And then he cries so hard his shoulders shake with it, cries in a way that he hasn’t since the day the dragon came and burned his home around him.
And his voice is hoarse, when he speaks. run raw from crying, so that he has to clear his throat a few times before he’s able to speak.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, and what paltry words. they cannot contain everything he wants to say, but dawn is coming and they made a deal, the company and he, to bury him when the light hits.
He spends the last remaining hours until dawn apologizing (and for a moment, just a moment, his lips twitch, because oh, how their roles have reversed. the last time he was here it was the hobbit who could not stop apologizing, and how it had vexed him. he thinks, could Bilbo hear him, he would get the same response. and so he stops.)
So he speaks of home, and what it means.
What it means to him, that they have won it back — and what it means, now, that when they return, they will be leaving a piece of it behind.
“You said to me once,” he says, just as the dawn is breaking. “When I asked why you returned, that you would help us win it back, if you could.” His hand is idle, combing listlessly through bilbo’s hair, but Thorin had been looking at the stars, fading into morning. Now, he looks back at the hobbit, and smiles through his tears. “You hardly knew us. you weren’t kin. you had no personal claim in our venture. We — I — had treated you poorly. and yet you would still defend us. would still fight for us.”
Again he leans down, this time a dwarven gesture, forehead to forehead. The tears in his eyes break and spill over. (and for a moment, he feels bad, for ruining Bilbo’s clothes, until he realizes it no longer matters. Bilbo will not be there to complain at him for it.)
“That is far more kindness than I deserved.”
And then, as the sun rises, and he moves to stand, he runs a gentle hand over bilbo’s face, as if to close his eyes, to say goodbye.
“I said before that when we first met you you had no personal claim in our history. But I spoke in haste. You have a claim on our history, Bilbo. (perhaps the first since Smaug descended from the north and tried to wipe it all away).
From now until the world is renewed, the halls of Durin will ring with your name, Master Baggins. …Bilbo. Burglar. Barrell-Rider. Sting Bearer. Garden Grower.” A smile. “Friend.”
Sometimes, a storm is just a storm.
Imagine Thorin singing lullabies for his nephews. ♥