Chapter Text
"Like the first rosebud / of a tender spring,
A heart's first love / does sink its roots in"
“The First Rose Blooms Longest In The Heart", a Shire love song”
[[Now]]
No mere words could have prepared Bell for the reality of an Ereborean winter.
The first snow began less than a day after the eleven delegation departed. Neither side had attempted to use Bell’s services as leverage again, though a dozen copies of her new farming tools were forged to fit elven hands and were bartered for the promise of seeds delivered in the spring.
The delicate lacy snowflakes had been charming for the first week but the problem was that they just kept coming. The intense cold cut through every layer of clothing Bell possessed and she only attempted to venture past the gates twice. The second time she’d only gone three steps over the threshold before the icy wind drove her back inside. Like a damned cat, muttered one of the disgruntled guards as they winched the gate shut again and though she bristled with offense, she couldn’t altogether blame him for it. It had been foolish to attempt venturing out and the more rational part of her could admit it. As for the less rational part of her, well, it had been many years since the Fell Winter but that did not make it easier to endure being trapped inside until the spring thaw.
If the spring ever comes, Bell thought wretchedly, burrowing deeper into her bed.
There was an odd, disorienting fatigue dragging at her every limb. At first, she had thought nothing of it, supposing that her body was at long last catching up on much-needed rest from the weeks of farm work and perhaps even still from the long journey before that. But her sleep was shallow and ineffective and often Bell woke up feeling more tired than before. Sometimes she couldn't sleep at all, laying in bed and looking up at the dark ceiling of her little room, hardly able to breathe through the accumulated weight of her exhaustion, feeling as if the whole of the Lonely Mountain was sat upon her chest and squeezing all the air out of her aching lungs. On bad nights, Bell would light a single candle on her narrow desk and twist her ring around and around in circles, finding some bleak comfort in the dull shine of the gold metal.
None of the dwarrow seemed much bothered, the weather hardly affecting the rhythm of their lives and in some shameful, petty corner of her heart, Bell resented them for it. She did her absolute best not to let any of her wretched jealousy spill over upon the others and threw herself with visible cheer into helping Ori and the other scholars restore the library as best she could with her very limited khuzdul. And perhaps Bell could have dragged herself through the winter in such a way, by the tips of her bloody fingernails with her smile flashing overbright to blind anyone who looked at her too closely, were it not for Kili and Tauriel.
Not that it was their fault, per se.
To the relief of almost everyone, the elf maiden had taken a position as the captain of King Bard’s personal guard and leader of Dale’s armed forces, ragged and untrained as they were. With her presence alone she reinforced Bard’s claim to rule in the eyes of menfolk who had long esteemed the woodland elves and her quiet advice on how to organize and protect a kingdom was, in its own way, just as valuable as the gold Thorin had given them. Her position had also allowed everyone to save face—King Thanadriul would not, or maybe could not, accept her back after she’d so flagrantly disobeyed a direct order but he was pleased to “gift” her expertise to the men as a gesture of goodwill and reap the benefits thereof. The dwarrow, in their turn, could not have snubbed an ally who had done so much for them without consequence but were all visibly relieved that the leafeater would not be settling beneath their precious mountain.
Only Kili complained bitterly at the injustice of being separated from his lady love by the winter weather.
“I don’t see why we can’t dedicate the funds to maintaining the road between Erebor and Dale even during winter,” he complained for what seemed to be the hundredth time that week. Even Fili, who had the patience of Mahal himself when it came to his younger brother, was beginning to shut these arguments down with something less than perfect sympathy in his voice.
“Why doesn’t anyone see that it makes sense to have access to the city in case of an emergency?”
“Why can’t you see that missing that pointy elf-face ain’t no damn emergency?” growled Dwalin, banging a fist on the table. As head of security in Erebor, Kili had appealed to him more than the others and it was wearing his temper thin. “You best pray to your fucking Maker that the spring comes soon because I ain’t letting you step a foot outside the mountain ‘til it does.”
“But spring is still months away.” Kili wailed and maybe it was his words or maybe it was the desperate aching way he said them but hearing them seemed to snap inside of her all at once.
Bell burst into sobs.
It caught her completely off-guard; the violence of her emotions shook her like the last leaf clinging to a tree in a storm. She could barely draw air into her lungs, certainly not enough to answer the Company’s shocked outcry as they gathered around her asking what was wrong.
“I don’t— I don’t—” She gasped, nearly blind with weeping.
Someone grasped her hands and Bell clutched them like a lifeline. Her fingers were forcibly uncurled and then pressed flat. She blinked hard through her falling tears to watch Thorin place her hand over his heart.
“Breathe with me,” he demanded and drew in a long, deep breath. Bell could feel his chest expanding under her touch, the wonderful intoxicating heat of him, the nearness of his body making her suddenly and painfully conscious of her own body, of her response to him.
Even after everything, Thorin still made her feel safe.
She took a breath. Then another. Her fingers spread out greedily across his chest, strained to the limit of their reach, touching as much of him as possible. It grounded her, the stolen intimacy of it—her hand over his heart, his breath in her lungs.
“Better now?” His words were brusque, bitten off in a way that sounded like anger, but his eyes searched her face with an intensity that made her tremble. Or perhaps she was merely trembling from the aftershocks of her crying fit, a full-body shivering that she could not get under control. Embarrassed by her weakness and keenly aware of the worried crowd around them, Bell drew away and tried to stand.
“Much better now, thank you, there’s no need to fuss over—” and then her knees buckled under her and Bell went crashing right back into Thorin’s chest as he stood smoothly to catch her. She looked up at him dizzily. He looked very upset about something. About her falling at him? It was really quite rude of her but just then she didn’t think she had the strength to stand on her own.
“So very sorry about all this,” she said and fainted.
At first, the entire Company had crammed themselves into the healing clinic alongside her, but the second time that Bell had caught a worried look pass between her friends and burst into nervous tears, Oin had snapped and ordered everybody out with all the brusque authority of a Master Healer. Oin would have bullied even a stubborn Thorin into leaving if she hadn’t latched onto his arm with hysterical strength and—to her profound embarrassment, bursting into tears again—begged him to stay a little longer, pleas and apologies all jumbled up together in a barely coherent stream of words.
“Of course I’ll stay,” Thorin had soothed, pulling her in closer and, equal parts guilty and grateful, she pressed her face into the hollow of his throat.
“Sorry, I’m so—“ she mumbled against his bare skin, tasting the warmth of him and her own salty tears. She felt him swallow, felt his pulse thudding faster than it should. Bell knew she must be scaring him, that her behavior was bizarre and concerning, but even knowing it would make him feel better, she couldn’t bring herself to step away and stand on her own two feet.
She was distantly aware of Oin bustling around them, of taking her wrist and clucking over her pulse. He asked her question after question about her diet, her sleep habits, her daily routine; if she’d been exposed to anything in the library or in the corridors, if she could remember feeling dizzy or falling down before, if she had accepted any suspicious food or drinks.
“You think she’s been poisoned?” Thorin’s voice was so tense with rage that she could feel the thrum in his vocal cords. She pressed helplessly closer, wanting to comfort him but not having the words or the mental capacity to do more than rub her face against him in a reminder that she was still here, still alive.
“Keep your temper, Your Majesty,” Oin said with a complete lack of deference, muttering to himself about overreacting idiots in his healing rooms doing his patients no good. “Just askin’ routine questions.”
“If it’s not poison, what is it?”
Oin refused to speculate before he’d finished his poking and prodding. He ruthlessly extricated Bell from Thorin’s embrace—the only thing that let her keep her fragile composure was the fact that he seemed equally reluctant to let her go—in order to run a few tests.
He shone a strange light in her eyes, made her stand balanced on one foot for as long as she could, had her place a strange polished rock under her tongue for a minute, and the entire time continued to ask question after question, this time about the Shire, about her routine there in the wintertime, what she ate and how much she slept and how long she stayed underground in her smial.
Bell was thoroughly exhausted and confused when Oin finally guided her to sit down next to Thorin but the worst of the hysteria had passed off and her thinking was clearer. Still, she half-turned towards Thorin, unable to stifle the hopeful impulse that he might wrap her up in his arms again. She didn’t dare ask. She’d already presumed so much on him today, on their still-fractured friendship.
He twitched as if struck with the same impulse, but then his eyes slid from her towards Oin and he stayed where he was.
“You’ve reached a conclusion?” Thorin’s tone made it clear that he would brook no negative answer.
“I reckon so.” Oin finally pronounced, leaning back and tugging at the end of his beard with a thoughtful frown. “It’s a rare thing, nothing I’ve treated myself before, but I’ve read accounts.”
Bell felt her chest tighten with anxiety and the old healer must have read some of the fear in her expression because he softened, adding in a reassuring tone.
“It’s nothing dire, Master Burglar. We call it Mountain Sickness.”
“Explain,” snapped Thorin.
“It’s a strange condition, not well understood, but it seems that non-dwarrow don’t take well to being deep underground for months at a time without direct sun and fresh air. They grow sickly. Fatigue, dizziness, lack of appetite, inability to sleep, and outbursts of violent emotion.” Oin ticked off on his fingers as he peered at her increasingly guilty expression. “Any of those sound familiar?”
Bell couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked down at her hands twisted into her lap.
“I thought it would pass,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother anyone.”
She felt more than heard Thorin growl something deep and guttural in the back of his throat, the anger and frustration obvious despite the language barrier. She kept her eyes firmly, safely, in her lap as he went sweeping past her and out of the room, heavy footsteps ringing across the stone and then abruptly silenced by the thud of the heavy door shutting behind him.
“Don’t worry about the King,” Oin said after a moment, filling the ringing silence left in Thorin’s departure. “He’s only angry that he didn’t realize you were suffering. None of us did.”
The reproach in his voice, mild as it was, made her instantly feel like the worst sort of villain.
“I really didn’t mean to be a bother…” Bell began weakly, twisting her hands together in her lap. “Everyone was so busy with vital work for Erebor—I do know how important repairs are before the spring caravans!—and I thought it would silly to complain when… that is, I really did think it was just a little cold…”
“Hush now,” Oin said, firm but still kind. “Any scolding will have to wait until my patient is feeling better.”
Bell managed a weak, close-mouthed smile but she continued to twist her hands in her lap, nibbling at her bottom lip, thinking over what the Master Healer had said.
“Will I… will I have to leave the Moutain?” Bell asked, fighting to keep her voice from breaking.
Oin’s heavy white eyebrows nearly flew up into his hairline. He peered intently at the door where Thorin had exited so abruptly and shook her head with a sudden exhale of breath.
“Dramatic fools,” he muttered half to himself and then turning back to her, said in a tone that brooked no argument, “I’ll prescribe you a foul-tasting draught, and you’ll be required to take your exercise up on the ramparts once a week, despite the bitter cold. But there ain’t no cause for you to leave Erebor. It’s true you’ll have to work harder than a dwarf might to make a home beneath the Lonely Mountain, and that’s right unfair But I know you’re up to the challenge.”
He paused, placing a hand wrinkled with age and experience on top of Bell’s own twisted-up fingers, and when he spoke again it was with uncharacteristic gravity.
“We dwarrow have our own ways, steeped in tradition and stone, but you bring something new—a blend of courage and cleverness that has already seen us through the darkest of times. So take heart, Master Burglar. Your journey here is only just beginning, and with every step, you will shape the mountain as much as it shapes you. We all have faith in you, and I am not the only one eager to see the results.”
He squeezed her fingers with gentle encouragement.
His words, his tacit support of her place in Erebor, touched some deep, frozen place inside of her. Some part of her that felt perpetually like an outsider, an intruder. But to thaw is always a little painful, no matter how much one longs for spring.
Bell lowered her head and wept hot, thankful tears over their joined hands.