Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bilbo woke up, and everything was green.

He was lying on his back in bed. It was so comfortable. It was so comfortable.

Oh, how he’d missed a bed! Hobbits really weren’t made to sleep out on the ground: not in nasty, dirty, wettish fens nor out upon the dry, bare, sandy heath. No, hobbits were meant to sleep in beds just like this one, which was near perfectly designed to remind Bilbo of home — though the green above Bilbo’s head was like nothing he had ever seen in a hobbitish smial.

In the Shire, you would certainly see a great deal of green, if you were to look out the window of any hobbit hole. There, the blue and white of cloud and sky were always trumped by the astonishing green of growing things: grass and tree-leaf and produce for harvest… peony shrub, rose, and lilac… climbing sweet pea– morning glory– grape vine–

Goodness, but his head did hurt! And the green above him was swimming.

It was a deep, dark green, which in and of itself was definitively un-Shire-like; this was not the sunny green of plant life, at all. This deep green was cut through with irregular veins of white, jagged as lightning strikes. In fact, the comparison was uncanny, for Bilbo found that these branching white slashes had the tendency to flicker just like lightning might fork across a stormy sky.

Although, this effect was probably due to the fact that he simply could not focus his eyesight correctly!

Bilbo blinked several times. He meant to do it quickly, to clear out his vision, but his eyelids dragged and so the process was slow. But it did help, a bit — enough to see shadows and shine playing upon the dark green, and enough to notice the pale light emanating from a window with a drawn shade: hard to look at directly, since even when shaded, the light was searing as it danced across the ceiling–

Oh, it was stone! He was looking at a ceiling made of stone. And it was green stone — all of it! How extraordinary, for stone to be green. Bilbo had thought that any stone big enough for building — the kind you could cut from a quarry — would have to be grey, brown, or black. He could not imagine finding such a vibrant color in stone anywhere beyond perhaps a little rock that might surprise and entice you from a riverbed, waiting to be picked up and claimed as a new treasure.

But here he was looking at the tops of walls, and a ceiling, and scrolls of geometric carvings that shamed any hobbitish attempt at wainscoting — all in green stone. Who could ever imagine such a thing? Remarkable. Yes, it was a far cry from the simple green grass that carpeted over the roof of Bag End.

“Green ceilings!” he exclaimed aloud. “Green roofs!”

— Well, this is to say, Bilbo tried to exclaim these statements aloud. In reality, he found that his throat only clicked with excruciating dryness. Then that same throat gave up a desiccated little cough, which was like nothing so much as a sort of choking croak. Then this croak collapsed in on itself and made it terribly difficult to draw in any air. Then Bilbo gasped and gulped in panic, and then this gasping and gulping set off a terrible pain in his neck, and then that pain was throbbing all through his head–

“Bilbo?”

There was someone else in the room.

Bilbo turned his head on instinct, and — oh, mistake, mistake! The pain only sharpened, and the swimming was back and much worse than before, sending his stomach in circles. He felt exactly as if he were rolling down a hill, surrounded as he was by green and light, which were swinging this way and that across his vision like he was turning over and over between earth and sky. Pain, vertigo, and nausea. Oh, no. Oh, no.

His mouth flooded with saliva; he was going to vomit, he was sure of it. He opened his mouth to cry, “Help!” — though it was unclear even to himself what he thought anyone could actually do, at the moment, to help — but what came out instead was a rush of drool and a panicked whine.

So: pain, vertigo, nausea, and shame, then. Lovely.

“Bilbo, it’s all right. Can you speak?”

The voice was un-Shire-like, dark and deep — was it green, too? There wasn’t enough time to decide, for the world was tilting, and the white of the sheets was suddenly far too close to his face, and then there was nothing to see at all.

--

Bilbo woke up again, and everything was marginally better.

He noticed the pain in his head right away, this time, but his vision didn’t swoop about as it had been doing previously; the walls, the ceiling, the carvings, all of it looked still and stable. Even the light was easier to look at this time around: soothing and cantaloupe-colored, extending across the ceiling in a long, gently glowing rectangle. It made the green of the stone, which he had marveled at before, all the richer and more intriguing, for having the color of it so obscured. It was sunset.

Mindful of his mistake from earlier, Bilbo did not turn his head to look about himself. Even with his vision so restricted, however, he was propped up enough to observe that he was in a lovely room — clean, simply-furnished, and rather small. There was a deeply shadowed doorway across from the foot of his bed, and a tall hutch to the doorway’s left, stocked with clean linen lit up orange in the evening sunlight, plus many little glass bottles and stacks of metal dishes of some sort. A large basin rested upon the hutch’s benchtop, alongside a silver ewer beaded with condensation.

This was a sickroom, Bilbo surmised. Well, that made sense — he certainly did feel sick. He was very grateful to be in a bed, at least, while feeling so poorly; he hadn’t slept indoors since Bree!

Feeling more and more alert as the heavy sleep cleared from his mind, Bilbo next registered the sound of rustling to his left. Not alone, then. That was a pleasant thought. The last time Bilbo had been ill, there had been no one in his smial to offer him any sort of comfort. It made for a funny sort of poetic justice, that he should need to leave behind everyone he knew and go off with dwarven strangers, in order to find someone kind enough to attend him in sickness.

Careful not to move his neck, Bilbo swiveled his eyes to try and see who it was. Even this turned his stomach a bit, but at least it did not make the pain any worse.

He saw Bofur first. He was seated in a chair to the left of Bilbo’s bedside, and at the sound of Bilbo’s hum of recognition, he looked up from the piece of wood he was whittling and a smile broke out across his face.

But Bilbo was already distracted, for behind Bofur was Thorin Oakenshield, the source of the rustling: for he was pacing the length of the whole room in only a few steps, before turning about and starting again, arms crossed, face thunderous.

The strangest sensation hit Bilbo, then, at the sight of Thorin looking stern and stressed, per usual. It felt as if Bilbo’s ribcage was being expanded from within by a mass of sweet Bywater toffee, stretching out his chest and sending his heart a-thump-thump-thumping from the giddy stickiness. And even as this feeling ignited all his senses with a delicious nervousness, it also seemed to work away the tension Bilbo had not even realized he was holding in his recumbent body. He could feel the stiffness in his sore neck loosening a bit, as he melted deeper into his pillow.

Oh, goodness, he realized. So that’s how it is!

Everything must be very close to the surface, at the moment, if he was feeling such an open flush of attraction for Thorin. Bilbo would have to keep a strict hold on himself, if he was called upon to speak.

“All right there, Bilbo?” said Bofur, putting this new resolution of Bilbo’s immediately to the test. Bofur’s voice was warm, and low in a typical sickroom hush, but it still bounced about Bilbo’s brain like a farmhand’s signaling whistle might cut across a cornfield.

Bilbo’s mouth opened to respond and ask all the needful — Where am I? What happened? When shall we get back on the road? — but as it did, he realized his throat was just as dry as it had been the last time he had awakened. What a strange thing to forget! It did not fill him with the same panic as it had before, but he did feel himself flapping his mouth open and closed in a foolish manner, trying to work up enough moisture to speak.

Behind Bofur, Thorin moved with a quickness; Bilbo expected him to leave the room, but he only retrieved a small cut-glass cup from the medicine hutch and filled it with water from the ewer. Almost faster than Bilbo’s sore head could register, Thorin had dropped a little metal pipe into the cup and come up alongside Bofur beside Bilbo’s bed.

Bilbo tried to raise his arms to take hold of the drink, but his muscles felt weak and jellied. In any case, the cup was already below Bilbo’s chin, and Thorin aimed the metal pipe to Bilbo’s lips.

Helplessly, Bilbo looked to Bofur. What was he meant to do?

Bofur was still grinning. “Well, we don’t have all day. Go on!” he prompted. He pursed his lips beneath his big moustache and made a loud sucking noise.

Bilbo flushed. It was already strange enough to have Thorin holding his water for him, and it was an added humiliation to have to suck (goodness gracious!) at anything while Thorin was watching. Still, Bilbo did as he was told, and the little metal pipe did indeed draw up the water into his mouth, which felt so glorious that he forgot all about the bizarreness of the situation for a moment.

O! Water cold we may pour at need, down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed, Bilbo heard in his head as he drank. That was a good old song, wasn’t it? He wondered if the dwarves would like to learn it on the road. They sang a great deal, but Bilbo had not yet been brave enough to share any of his Shire songs with them, for fear of being mocked and shouted down. But if they had arranged this room for him, he could not be so much of an outsider, still, for them to turn their noses up at a hobbitish ditty?

Bilbo stopped drinking, just to draw a quick breath, but Thorin took the cup away.

“How are you feeling,” he demanded more than asked, though his voice was quiet and surprisingly soothing.

“Very well, thank you,” Bilbo responded with instinctive, unthinking politeness.

He had only an instant to marvel over how easy it was to speak — now that the water had wet his throat and cleared the fog from his pounding head — before Bofur laughed. It was loud enough at first to make Bilbo flinch, but then Bofur covered his mouth and quieted himself.

“Not buying that,” he told Bilbo. “Try it again.”

“Sorry,” said Bilbo. He blinked a bit and tried to summon honesty. “Well. My head hurts.”

“Aye, I expect it would,” Bofur said, still grinning. “Still, look at you! Stringing two or three words together at a time. That’s a good sign.”

Bilbo smiled in reply, but he kept an eye on Thorin, who had set the cup down and then turned away a bit, behind Bofur’s back.

Thorin dragged his hands down his face, which looked tired and strained. Bilbo could bet he was impatient to be on their way again, now that Bilbo was awake. He was probably very cross with the whole situation. It was a good thing Bofur was here, then; his cheerfulness had the tendency to keep conversations civil (if not necessarily polite — Bofur was, after all, a fairly crass person).

Both Bofur and Thorin looked well, at least, now that they were not in the midst of traveling. They certainly looked better than Bilbo felt!

…Actually. Aside from the signs of worry and impatience in them, Bofur and Thorin had cleaned up very, very nicely, indeed.

Bilbo had noticed that while the dwarves’ complicated armor was well-made, it was just as well-worn, to the point of shabbiness. But now Thorin was dressed both as simply and as finely as Bilbo had ever seen him, in a blue linen tunic and a pair of trousers in rich tabbinet cloth, both embellished with gorgeous embroidery and rather a lot of wrinkles — but creases were unsurprising, if this was what he always wore under his leathers.

Bofur’s clothing, on the other hand, seemed almost inexplicable. He was still wearing his hat, of course, but his jacket was made of crimson silk and lined with thick, brown fur. Bilbo could understand that Bofur would dress differently when they were off the road, staying at an inn fine enough to provide this sort of sickroom. But the color and quality of the jacket was so shocking that Bilbo reeled to think Bofur had brought it on the journey at all.

Or maybe that sensation of reeling was just the pain still lancing its way through Bilbo’s head.

“What happened?” Bilbo asked. That was as good a place to start as any.

“There was an accident with the construction in Dale,” Thorin said darkly. “Typical of men, to be so careless of their worksite...”

Bilbo couldn’t remember hearing of anywhere called Dale, not off the top of his head — but then again, they were about a week past their stay in Bree and therefore well past Bilbo’s geographical knowledge of the outside world. Doubtless, Dale was some village of men out to the East.

“And was it only me who got hurt?” he asked. “Everyone else is unharmed, I hope?”

Bofur was quick to assure him: “I believe so; the boards only gave way under you. A touch of bad luck on your part, I’m afraid. Or maybe it's just that you've built up too luscious a figure, these days!”

He waggled his brows in a mockery of flirtation, and behind him, Thorin growled. Bilbo, for his part, felt his face flame hot. The dwarves did not seem to prize plumpness as much as hobbits did, based on the size of their rations, but even they could not have missed how much weight Bilbo had already lost on the road.

“Thank you for finding a room for me,” he said in deflection, instead. “It’s very kind.”

“Oh, sure,” Bofur said, eyes still twinkling. “But you know, if you wanted a break from the royal accommodations, your Majesty, there’re less painful ways to go about it.”

“Bofur,” Thorin warned, voice tense. “Enough joking. Please.”

Bilbo’s blush intensified, to hear Bofur thus scolded. But dwarves were so frank, and their teasing could bite.

Thorin had indeed been forcing the Company to camp on the road — the precise opposite of “royal accommodations” — and it was an old joke, even at this early stage of their journey, to note how uncomfortable Bilbo was with sleeping rough.

Still, Bilbo wished that Bofur had not put it into Thorin’s head that Bilbo had gotten himself hurt on purpose: to get out of spending another night on the ground, or to try and secure himself a fancier, heartier meal. Bilbo knew what a sacrifice it was to be here. That was why he had tried to thank them for hiring a room in the first place.

They were wasting time, after all, sitting about instead of making progress on the road to Erebor, and the room was well-appointed enough that it could not possibly have come cheap. From what Bilbo remembered of his contract, any extraneous, “luxury” expenses on the road were his own responsibility, and even though he was quite comfortable enough in his finances to afford a convalescing room, it was not as though he had access to his holdings in the First Bank of Hobbiton out here in Dale. This accident of Bilbo’s had likely put the Company back a fair bit in their budget, and it would be ages before Bilbo would be in a position to repay them for their trouble.

But: “All right, all right,” Bofur was saying, unoffended. He slapped his hands on the tops of his thighs and made to stand up. “I’ll go find Oin, then; he’ll still be fussing with the poppy–”

“No!” Bilbo cried, sending an extra jolt of pain ricocheting through his head and down his neck.

Both Bofur and Thorin looked at him in surprise.

Bilbo was a bit embarrassed for the outburst, but he had a sudden dread of being alone with Thorin. He did not much want to hear what else Thorin might have to say about this accident in Dale, not to mention his sure-to-be unflattering thoughts about Bilbo’s culpability in his own injury. And anyway, Bofur shouldn’t be the one to leave! It was only a little joke, and not at all Bofur’s fault that Thorin had no sense of humor.

“Thorin, would you go?” Bilbo asked. He scrambled for a reason that would not communicate that he expected Thorin to do his bidding (Bilbo did not), nor that he wished to shoo Thorin from the room (Bilbo absolutely did). He decided on: “The others must be impatient, and I’m sure they would appreciate hearing from you that I’m all right.”

Really, they would better appreciate hearing that they would all be able to get back on the road sooner rather than later, but Bilbo was determined, on this quest, to hold onto a modicum of his self-worth, such as it was. And anyway, Thorin could tell the Company whatever he liked, so long as he was out of this room.

Bofur and Thorin shared a quick, though clearly significant, look between them, and then they had the gall to return their gazes to Bilbo as if they had not looked away from him at all! But really, there was no need to hide their little covert communication. They could have stared into each other’s eyes for absolute hours, and Bilbo would have been no closer to understanding what such a look was supposed to mean, not knowing either of them well enough to get a read on it.

He sniffed, wishing that he could sit up straight, and so make full use of his inherited Bagginsish pique (which could be quite fearsome). Thorin was, as usual, being awfully rude! Snapping at everyone, and conspiring via looks, and refusing to leave when asked.

But after a moment, Bilbo made himself relax his shoulders upon his pillow. Bofur and Thorin were not hobbits; they were not obligated to follow his social cues, nor to do a better job hiding their opinion of him while he was in their presence — nor even to leave when Bilbo politely suggested it! That was not how dwarves did things, Bilbo knew well enough by now, so it was no use being offended.

He supposed, though, that it meant he ought to sink to their level, to best get his own feelings across.

Careful not to jostle his head or neck, Bilbo lifted his shaking arms to clasp his hands neatly over his lap, and he looked pointedly up at the ceiling with a cool blankness. He would not say another word until Thorin was out of the room. Such a course of action would be unbearably rude if leveraged against another hobbit, but that only meant even a dwarf could not possibly misinterpret it.

Bilbo expected Thorin to stomp and bluster over being asked to play anyone’s errand boy, but instead he only said, a little distractedly, “Yes– Oin and the others. I’ll be back soon–” before he made a sort of hesitant motion towards Bilbo on the bed. After a moment, he visibly thought the better of whatever gesture he had intended, and instead strode purposefully out the door.

After he was gone, Bilbo flicked his gaze over to Bofur and gave him one of his own significant looks, of the sort that he had already shared with Bofur many times on the quest: a heavy blink and then wide eyes, as if to say, well, that’s Himself, for you!

It meant a great deal to Bilbo to have someone with whom he might commiserate over the way Thorin openly disliked him, and Bofur was just such a person. He usually responded by dipping his bearded chin, pulling the corners of his mouth down, and raising his eyebrows up high, as if to say behind Thorin’s back: oooooh, excuse me, your Royal Highness!

But today Bofur did nothing of the sort. He smiled, but his eyebrows beetled together and he cocked his head, confused.

Well, that was fair enough. Bofur could not be thrilled with this delay to their journey, either, so he was probably in no mood to share in Bilbo’s usual little attempts at jokes.

“So, where are we now?” Bilbo asked, moving on.

“Oh.” Bofur looked around himself, as if seeing the room for the first time. “We’re in the refurbished Infirmary. You haven’t been in here before. It’s close to the Gate, and Oin wanted you nearby for observation.”

Bilbo hummed. “And so this is Dale.”

Bofur’s expression of confusion worsened. “No. We brought you up to the Mountain.”

Bilbo squinted. “Those… big mountains up ahead?”

“Erebor.” Bofur raised his voice a little — not out of anger, Bilbo didn’t think, but rather as if he thought Bilbo might not be able to hear him. “We brought you up to Erebor.”

Erebor!

Bilbo was shocked.

Erebor!

“Erebor!” He said it out loud. “What– My word! My word, really?”

He chanced a twitch of his head to the left, the better to look at Bofur straight on. The movement fed the fiery pain that radiated through his skull and neck, but he was distracted enough by this enormous news that he barely felt it.

Erebor! He examined the green stone of the wall behind Bofur’s hat: the stone of Erebor, that mythical, almost unimaginable place!

To suddenly be there! Or rather: here!

“I must have been unconscious for a terribly long time!” Bilbo exclaimed, raking his gaze up the wall to study the angular carvings that repeated near the top. Real Ereborean carvings! “How on earth did you carry me all that long way? How did you keep me fed?”

Bofur’s confusion seemed to be so complete that now he was wearing no expression at all. “…It really isn’t that long a journey–”

But then Bilbo had a sudden, cheerful realization. “Oh, my, this must mean you’ve already dealt with the problem of the dragon! Good show!”

“Bilbo, no–”

“Sorry, you haven’t dealt with the dragon?”

“Bilbo.” Bofur’s tone had gone dead steady. Dead serious. It was very sobering, coming as it did from someone who was not inclined to be very sober about anything. “I think we’re speaking at cross purposes. Will you– How’s this: why don’t you tell me what you think is going on.”

Bilbo scoffed off a little laugh. “Bofur.”

“Humor me; I’m a tad confused, is all. What were you doing yesterday?”

The whole exercise seemed silly, since evidently Bilbo had been asleep for a long, long time, lugged hither and thither over more than half the continent, all the way to Erebor. But he opened his mouth to give it a go. “We were–”

But when he tried to retrieve the memory… it was difficult. He found that he was not so much casting his mind back as dropping it, like a heavy stone, into dark and stagnant waters.

Because the past really was terribly murky.

In the span of time between the death of his parents and this journey with Thorin’s Company, almost all of Bilbo’s days had taken on the same shape. He had therefore never before had cause to try and recall what he’d just gotten up to, and so he was surprised at what a tricky thing it was to recollect.

He remembered Bag End, of course; he remembered taking his annual tea with cousin Fosco, and going off on marketing day, and hunkering down through the first spring storm. He remembered the dwarves desolating his pantry, that’s for sure — and singing their traveling songs, all solemn by the fire. He remembered his night at the Prancing Pony in Bree. He remembered hearing about Thorin’s fearsome heroism, how he had earned his name.

“Well,” Bilbo said at last. “I suppose the last thing I remember is Balin telling us all the tale of Azanulbizar.”

He pronounced the name carefully, since he had never said it aloud before. He had turned it over many times in his head, though, he realized — when he was trying to fall asleep the night after hearing the grand tale. He had been thinking about Thorin, as he so often did these days.

By the Lady! It was the most annoying sort of affliction, really, his attraction to Thorin. It was like Bilbo had set his sights on the one pie at the bake-off made by Lobelia Sackville-Baggins: the one pie he knew he would surely never be invited to taste.

Bilbo sighed and set his aching mind back to the task at hand. “We may have travelled on a bit after that, the next day, but you know how all the walking blurs together. That story is the last thing that’s really clear.”

“You were speaking with Balin about history in Dale?”

“Well, maybe,” Bilbo allowed. “But I was referring to eventide, when we camped by those bluffs. Fili and Kili fought over which outcropping was best for us to sleep under.”

Bofur squinted and shook his head a little, evidently still confused.

“Oh, come now! Kili almost made his collapse, he was doing so much thumping and pummeling of it, trying to show off how structurally sound it was. I thought you were going to kill yourself laughing.”

“…What– You mean in the Weather Hills!” Bofur exclaimed after a moment, visibly startled.

“Yes, sorry. That’s the name.”

“But that was ages ago!”

“A couple of days, perhaps, to my mind. Though of course, as I said, I must have been unconscious much, much longer, for us to be in Erebor now.”

Bofur leaned back in his chair and made a sort of drawn-out, unhappy noise. “And so. For you. We are only just travelling to Erebor for the first time. When we were– were hoping to roust Smaug out of the Mountain?”

“Yes. Are we– Is that not what you’ve just done?”

“Ah.” Bofur lifted a hand to his forehead and pushed up his hat. “No, it’s not.”

“Oh.” Bilbo’s stomach dropped, and his head pounded.

“You see–” Now Bofur’s hand was pressing his hat down hard onto his head. His eyes were huge. “Maker, Bilbo, I don’t know how to tell you. It’s been about seven years, since we got the Mountain back.”

Bilbo’s mouth went dry again, like he hadn’t had any water after waking up at all. “Seven years!”

“Aye. Seven years since the Battle, and the quest, and all. And you’ve been living here since then. You’ve been rul–” Bofur stopped himself abruptly.

He looked as tense and stressed in his chair as Thorin had looked while pacing, back when Bilbo first opened his eyes. Bofur’s brows and moustache drooped, and the look of it gave his expression a beseeching air, as if imploring Bilbo to come clean, like Bilbo was only joking around.

But Bilbo could only grimace apologetically. No, I’m ever so sorry. I know we like to laugh, but this isn’t a bit. It’s real.

Bofur blew out a deep breath. “Well, you have definitely been here, awake, helping to rebuild the Mountain, that whole time. Let’s just say that.”

Bilbo’s chest felt tight again, but it was nowhere near as pleasant a sensation as it had been when he first set eyes on Thorin: more of a sucking mudpit feeling than an abundance of sweet, treacly toffee.

Seven years. Seven years. Such a gap in time was impossible to accept. Even if it hadn’t been, earlier, Bilbo’s head would surely have been hurting by now–

Oh.

“Oh, of course!” Bilbo tutted to himself in realization. “Of course. My head hurts.”

--

“So you are saying that such memory loss is common with head injuries, among hobbits?”

It was Yinka who asked this question, once all the fuss over Bilbo’s condition had mostly died down. She was a physician, and one of the menfolk from Dale — Dale, of course, being the town located just down the Mountainside from the entrance to Erebor. Bilbo remembered the name, now, from hearing the dwarves’ tale of the day the dragon first attacked.

Yinka had been entreated to come up the Mountain to help minister to Bilbo’s injury. Oin (who, back when they set out from the Shire, had introduced himself as Thorin’s physician and therefore the healer amongst his Company) had known Bilbo long enough — seven years! — to understand that a mannish healer was better suited to tend to a hobbitish wound than a dwarven doctor might be. Apparently, over their time together in Erebor, Oin and Bilbo had discovered that hobbits were in many ways more like men than they were like dwarves, at least when it came to matters of health!

And so, as his friends had prepared to transport an injured and unconscious Bilbo back to the safety of the Mountain, they had sent for Yinka to follow them.

As for the injury, it was a rotted floorboard that had done it; Bilbo had stepped clear through a patch of construction scaffolding and knocked his head in the short fall down to the stonework below. Bofur said as much, after he had finally recovered from the staggering news of Bilbo’s lost memory. Bilbo had needed to suggest that Bofur pour himself a glass of cold water (or go find something stronger!) before the dwarf was able to blink his way out of his wide-eyed shock.

“Really, you should have a care with yourself,” Bilbo had said when Bofur refused the chance for refreshment. “Are you quite sure you’re feeling well enough to keep talking?”

“By my beard, Bilbo, I should be asking you that. And anyway, I know better than to get in a flap like this. Bifur’s taught me how not to act the fool over a head injury. All right, I’ve snapped out of it!” He drummed his hands upon his thighs and gave Bilbo a deliberately cheerful smile. “Whatever it is that’s happened, you know we’ll all help you figure it out, together. I promise.”

The thing was, Bilbo knew exactly what had happened. Head wounds were known to cause this sort of Forgetting, in the Shire. Striking his head — after even a short fall! — would do the trick nicely.

That’s what Bilbo got, he supposed, for wandering about a building site in a town of men, after being told all his life that the world outside the Four Farthings was a dangerous, dicey place. It was a shame, though, that such a thing had to happen while Bilbo was in the company of both Thorin II, King Under the Mountain, and King Bard the Dragonslayer, ruler of Dale and Esgaroth, when the latter was showing off his people’s reconstruction efforts.

Bofur said that both Kings had in fact walked right over the same boards that gave way under Bilbo’s feet, mere moments before! Bad luck, indeed — or maybe it was good luck, Bilbo thought to himself. These were Kings they were talking about, after all, and Kings mattered far more than some hobbit who still happened to be sticking around the Mountain, seven years past his contract.

Oh, but the very thought of it: Bilbo Baggins being on friendly terms with not one, but two Kings!

A strike to the head after a ten-foot fall would not have harmed a dwarf, Bilbo surmised from Bofur’s description of the incident, and the large wound now on Bilbo’s temple might have killed a man outright. But it figured that for a hobbit, the injury would balance out somewhere in between. Bilbo could sense a latent, protean sort of joke about the word “halfling” swirling about in his mind —

(Halfling: halfway between dwarf and man, but luckily blessed with more brains than both? Enough to have plenty of memories to spare, if a few were lost?)

— but between the vicious, pounding ache in his head and the pain tonic he was given later, Bilbo’s wit was not sharp enough to voice such a joke aloud that evening.

The topic of pain medication — of what sort, and what concentration, would be safe for a hobbit with this particular injury — was what Oin and Yinka had been discussing when Thorin (politely jettisoned from the sickroom) had found them and ordered them back to Bilbo’s side. Then Thorin went, as Bilbo had asked, to inform the others that the hobbit was awake and speaking.

And so Thorin was not with them when the two doctors came to check on Bilbo’s condition. He was not there when Bofur first explained — with great calm and good cheer, just as he had promised — that it turned out Bilbo had no memory of the last seven years of his life… and in truth thought they were still traveling on the quest for Erebor… and had actually heard of such a thing happening to his kind before… and did either of the physicians happen to know if this was normal, at all?

To their credit, neither Oin nor Yinka’s expression betrayed any degree of surprise at these facts, though their sudden and absolute stillness rather gave the game away.

Soon enough, though, Oin got to work fetching his medical instruments from the hutch, while Yinka settled down on her knees beside the bed, as there were no chairs about that were suitable for her great height. She was the first lady among menfolk who Bilbo could remember formally meeting — though it soon came out that they already knew each other, only Bilbo had, of course, Forgotten.

She had dark skin and dark eyes, and Bilbo liked the way that her accent gave weight to different words than Bilbo’s did, and the way that her densely-curled hair was arranged beneath a wrap of brightly-colored and intricately-patterned fabric. Bilbo thought this fabric was beautiful! However, when he had tried to offer the usual polite compliments and curiosity — with a bit more earnestness than usual, since the fabric was truly exquisite — she would hear none of it.

“I will tell you all you would like to hear about wax-resist dyeing later,” Yinka had said, not without a touch of humor, but still with the clear intent to cut off any further inquiry. “First, tell me of this headache of yours.”

But Bilbo didn’t get much chance to speak, it must be said. He could not even keep straight what all was happening in the sickroom, for Yinka was quick to check his eyes, asking him to look this way and that while she pulled, gently, at his eyelids (and moving his eyes about really did not help Bilbo’s headache).

Oin had produced a special sort of cut-metal lamp with a concentrated beam to better help with this examination (the light from which seemed only to amplify Bilbo’s pain), and then he began tapping away at Bilbo’s legs, asking if he could feel what Oin was doing to him.

Then Oin was asking Bilbo — loudly, of course, to accommodate Oin's hearing impairment — to pronounce various words while Yinka ran her hands through Bilbo’s hair, over his skull (and even these gentle jostles made Bilbo feel like a feller of trees was chopping away with an axe, right at the base of his neck).

Then Bilbo was being asked to touch his own nose.

Then he was meant to press his own palm hard against Oin’s hand while Oin pressed back.

Then he was tasked with looking straight ahead and naming the number of fingers Yinka held up at the edges of his vision.

In the midst of all this fuss, Bilbo did notice Thorin come back into the room; as soon as he was in the doorway, Thorin was already angling his neck to try and see what all was being done to Bilbo’s body.

Once again, the sight sent Bilbo aglow, all over, with curious pleasure.

Goodness, Bilbo thought to himself through the haze of pain and noise. If Bilbo was welcome to live in Erebor, he and Thorin were probably friends now! They must be, and surely had been for several years! How wonderful!

It would be a true relief, to be on good terms with Thorin.

From his bedside seat, Bofur laid a quick hand upon Bilbo’s arm, squeezing it once in encouragement before he stood to join Thorin by the door. Bilbo tipped his chin up to try and see what the two dwarves were discussing. He watched as Bofur — very gravely, without any trace of his former joviality — settled that same hand on Thorin’s back and directed him firmly out of the room.

The look on Bofur’s face disturbed Bilbo, and the continued flurry of activity from Yinka and Oin, who were now speaking to each other too rapidly and too loudly for Bilbo to parse, contributed to a feeling of dread so acute that it had Bilbo’s breath coming in shallow and his hands coming up quite without his say-so, to try to cover his eyes and block out all the stimulation.

It worked, though not exactly in the way Bilbo had intended; seeing him trembling and shielding his face, the physicians stopped talking and the room went silent.

“Are you all right, laddie?” Oin asked, in a tone far gentler than the one he had only just been using with Yinka.

Bilbo hummed, hiding behind his hands.

“I am seeing some tears,” Yinka commented, noticing that Bilbo was crying around the same time that he himself felt the wetness creeping beneath his fingers. Her tone stayed carefully non-judgmental, even as Bilbo felt a wave of embarrassment, to be caught so out of countenance by a dwarf and a man. “Where are they coming from? Is it the pain?”

It wasn’t, quite.

Even though the pain did, in Bilbo’s estimation, feel terrible, he was sure that a true resident of Erebor (as he supposedly was, now!) would be able to muddle through a headache. It would be silly to mention it, for everyone knew that he was injured and that his head hurt.

But it would be sillier still to try and explain what the true trouble was: to complain of the loudness and intensity of Yinka and Oin’s discussion, or to ask them to leave and send Bofur back in, or — best and most impossibly of all — to turn back the clock and leave him alone, in his accustomed silence, back in Bag End.

So he nodded a little, though it made him queasy. For that was the easiest answer: yes, why not. It was the pain.

Oin and Yinka were much quieter after that, so that Bilbo could almost ignore them entirely while he relaxed back into his pillow. He was eventually offered a bit of pain tonic diluted in water, which he drank up through the little metal pipe again while Oin held the glass under his chin. But otherwise he had the chance to lay still and undisturbed, bouncing his attention between the throbbing of his aching head and the throbbing of his anxious heart.

Until Thorin returned to the sickroom.

The first thing that Bilbo noticed was that he looked terrible: as if he had somehow managed to pack a week’s worth of sleepless nights into the span of time since Bofur had led him from the room. His face was sheet-white and expressionless, and his broad shoulders were uncharacteristically slumped. In his hands, he held a little porcelain tea cup, balanced in a matching saucer.

Full darkness had descended outside the window, by now. Over the course of his examination, Bilbo had noticed the sunlight easing its way through all sorts of fruitlike colors — from the cantaloupe tone he had first seen upon awaking, to a brilliant shade of persimmon, to the color of those red, red oranges one found down around Pincup way in the Shire, to the rosy blush of grapefruit — all before lingering for a time in a watery, nothing sort of color and finally vanishing altogether.

So now it was dark, and the only light came from the lamps and candles Oin and Yinka had brought into the room. It meant that Bilbo couldn’t see clearly enough to tell what exact flowers were emblazoned upon the tea cup. Sprays of something small: violets, maybe, or forget-me-nots.

It was that tea cup, above everything else, that managed to convince Bilbo that the missing seven years were real. The cup could not have been more delicate, more diminutive, or more clearly from the Shire.

Bilbo hadn’t brought it along on the quest; even back then, upon first leaving Bag End, he had known that to pack any such frippery would be unnecessary and unwise. He must have sent for it from Hobbiton, or brought it back to the Mountain himself after a visit. And evidently no one had mocked him for it, or at least not enough for him to have hidden it away where Thorin could not find it. Here it was, in Erebor, alongside Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield both.

So Bilbo asked Thorin, who was standing there holding the cup: “Is that for me?”

Thorin did not move.

Bilbo thought perhaps he hadn’t liked Bilbo’s tone of voice: frail and hopeful. Weak. But the answer to Bilbo’s question must have been yes, even if Thorin didn’t seem to want to give him the satisfaction of a response. He was holding the cup in such a way that made it clear he was not about to keep it for himself, and so Oin bustled around the bed to take it from him.

“Wait,” Thorin said, at last. His voice was empty and careworn. He pressed the side of his forefinger against the outside of the cup, just as Bilbo did when checking the temperature of poured tea. “It might still be too hot to drink.”

Oin took up the cup in one hand, and with the other, he grasped Thorin around the wrist in a bracing gesture. Then, sending a firm look towards Yinka, Oin settled the little metal pipe into the tea cup so that Bilbo could take a sip when it was cool.

Yinka asked, “Why don’t we start from the beginning, Bilbo? Tell us about this hobbitish memory loss.”

Which in turn brought them around to that central question of hers, concerning Bilbo’s lack of surprise to find seven years of his life gone: “So you are saying that such Forgetfulness is common with head injuries, among hobbits?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it is a common injury,” Bilbo proceeded to explain. They had been talking for a while, at that point: covering what Bilbo remembered from the quest and uncovering what Bilbo had heard back in Hobbiton, about these sorts of Forgetful head injuries.

And funnily enough, Bilbo was actually starting to feel rather better about the whole situation! The tea (made to his usual specifications) and the pain tonic were both working their wonders. Everything upsetting felt far away, and it was easier to focus on immediate comforts, such as the soft bed he was laying upon and the pleasure of speaking to attentive listeners about an interesting topic.

He continued, “It happens– well, perhaps once or twice in a decade, across the Shire.”

“So often!” Yinka marveled from her spot sitting upon the foot of the bed.

“Of course, it is up to chance: sometimes there are more cases, sometimes fewer.”

“In the Shireland?” Oin said. He was using a much larger and more embellished ear trumpet than the one he once had, during the quest. “But you live in such peace.”

“Oh, yes!” Bilbo agreed. “And this is why! Or at least partly — we know how much we risk when we brawl. But we do have our fair share of accidents, unfortunately. It becomes more likely, the memory loss, the more blows you take to the head over the course of your lifetime, and we’re mostly farmers. Farming is a dangerous profession, you know.”

“You are not a farmer.” Thorin said. He was still standing near the doorway and had been completely silent through Bilbo’s initial explanation of the memory loss.

Bilbo tried not to feel cowed by the King; he reminded himself that they were almost certainly friends, now, even if Thorin seemed as stony tonight as he had been through the portions of the quest that Bilbo remembered.

Bilbo would not be welcome in Erebor if Thorin still disliked him.

“No, I’m not a farmer,” Bilbo acknowledged. “A gentlehobbit like myself would not be the usual sort of person to Forget — though, you know, anyone may fall from a cart or have a bit of a household accident. It’s true that I can’t remember ever being hit in the head before, but going off on this quest, being gone from the safety of the Shire for seven years… I think it very likely that I hit my head a few times, in that stretch, and now I’m paying for it!”

Thorin brought up a hand to cover his mouth, and his eyes dragged closed in a slow blink.

“Have you all really never heard of this?” Bilbo asked the lot of them. Yes, he could certainly admit to himself that, the pain having receded, he was very much enjoying this conversation. It was an unexpected delight: to know more about a subject than anyone else present; to be listened to, cosseted and fawned upon.

“No,” Oin said. “Serious head injuries affect speech, not memory — at least in dwarrow.”

“I’ve not heard of anything like it. Most humans will die if they take a bad blow to the head,” Yinka added. “But there was a man in my grandfather’s generation. He was struck on the side of the head by a swinging boom while sailing the lake. It caused him to lose vision in his left eye. We still speak of it to this day. It is the closest thing I can think of, to what you describe.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like that!” Bilbo clicked his tongue. “No, thank you. In any case, I can see out of both eyes. It is only our memories that are affected, really.”

“Will they come back?” Thorin asked. His hand had dropped from his beard, and his arms were now crossed tightly over his chest.

Bilbo took a moment to consider the gossip he had listened to over the years, about the hobbits who had experienced a Forgetting like this.

“Sometimes,” he said. “I am not sure how or when, I’m sorry to say — I think I have heard that the longer it goes, the less likely it is that they’ll return, any or all. I suppose we will have to see.”

Oin turned back from where he had been looking at Thorin, and said quickly, as if looking to distract: “So, what do you do, in the Shire? To care for the ones who… Forget?”

Bilbo had to think again. “Well, I suppose at its heart, this is like any other injury and needs rest and a certain degree of easiness, if it is to heal. Of course, it can be–” Here his breath caught in his throat. “It can be upsetting, to lose any amount of time from your life, so a degree of patience is also necessary, I imagine, amongst the family and friends of the afflicted. I’ll try not to be difficult, when hearing about everything that’s happened.”

Oin smiled and patted Bilbo’s leg with the hand that was not holding his ear trumpet. “You’re not difficult, laddie.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a droll manner, which would not betray the twinge of uncertainty in his gut. He remembered just how ‘difficult’ the dwarves found him, as if it were — ha! — only yesterday.

“Sure I’m not difficult; not right this minute. But remember, I have lost seven years, so... I hope you will remember your patience. In any case–” Bilbo blustered along. “Folks used to talk about explaining things gradually, to let the Forgetter readjust to their life. Meet new faces, reacquaint themselves with the old. I’m afraid to say that part may take a while; it seems like you will have a lot to tell me!”

Yinka looked a bit troubled. Oin’s eyes flicked to Thorin and then away.

“…But it’s all turned out well, in the end,” Bilbo guessed tentatively. “Here we are! In Erebor! Successful quest. Um. Dead dragon. We could start there.”

For a moment, no one said a word. Then Oin took the trumpet away from his ear, a rather unmistakable sign that the conversation was over.

“I say we start with ‘rest,’ like you said.” He made a motion to urge Yinka up from the bed. “That tonic and the tea should put you right to sleep, if we aren’t around to keep you talking. Now, what else can we do, to keep you comfortable tonight?”

Bilbo found his eyes drawn to Thorin, but he was already leaving the room, the stiff lines of his back lurching past the doorway.

Bilbo made himself smile and looked back at Oin and Yinka. “Nothing, thank you. Everything is just as it should be. You’ve all been very kind.”

--

Over the next several days, Bilbo was surprised to realize that, all things considered, he was probably lucky to have had such an injury come to pass while he was living in Erebor, rather than back in the Shire.

There were all sorts of comforts that Bilbo could not have imagined encountering in Hobbiton. For one thing, dwarven wound care seemed much more advanced than anything a hobbitish doctor could offer. Bilbo was told that he had a great big cut on the side of his head, now, but that he wasn’t to worry: the wound had been carefully cleaned and stitched up with a special thread that would dissolve over time, rather than needing to be unpicked later!

What’s more, Bilbo was allowed to rest in bed without worry, as he had been unable to do when sick and living alone. There was no need to hobble about, wrapped in a blanket and wracked with the ache of fever, to fetch himself water and a crust of stale bread to tide him over — and Oin or Yinka took responsibility for waking him every so often and making sure that his mind stayed alert. When Bilbo was not sleeping, he was being supplied with pain medication and bone broth right there in his bed.

And the bed became a wonder in and of itself!

Because, one morning, Oin informed him that he had a visitor, and before Bilbo had much cause to panic, he learned it was a dwarven craftsperson. This dwarf had been sent with a special backrest that could be set up on Bilbo’s bed: a shiny silver frame complete with neat, linen-covered cushions. Its finest features, however, were a headrest that could be adjusted to support Bilbo’s neck at just the angle that would cause him the least pain, and a little hand crank that he could turn, to bring himself up to a sitting position or to lay himself back down, near flat upon the bed, to sleep.

The backrest had looked shockingly complicated to Bilbo, when it was first wheeled into the room, but the craftsdwarf assembled it over the head of the bed with great speed and no difficulty at all, and he carefully adjusted it to Bilbo’s preference once Oin and his assistants had supported Bilbo’s back so that the whole mechanism might be placed behind him.

It was very, very comfortable!

“This is only temporary, now,” Oin warned, once Bilbo was settled. “We’ll get you started on exercises to strengthen your neck muscles in the next week or so, but for the time being, let’s focus on keeping everything immobilized.”

Bilbo agreed without much concern; between the tonic he was taking and the pleasure of being upright in a sitting position, he couldn’t have cared less about what the future might bring!

The levered backrest was such a useful object — of the sort that he would never have thought to search for or commission in the Shire — that he was perhaps too effusive in thanking the craftsdwarf who had made it.

“Oh, I didn’t make it, your Ma– sir,” the dwarf said. He had not interrupted Bilbo’s gushing, tripping words, and now, in response, he was speaking very carefully. Bilbo could tell when someone was watching what they said. “But thankee! I’ll tell his M– uh, the Silversmith what did make it. He’ll be very pleased.”

“Ah– of course–” Bilbo tried to reply, feeling flustered. But the dwarf was already bowing deeply — in much the same style as Dwalin and Balin, Fili and Kili, when they had first come to Bag End — as he left the room.

The backrest was so comfortable, and the process of situating himself within it had been so trying, that Bilbo fell asleep almost immediately after the craftsdwarf was gone, and when he blinked his eyes open, he found that, once again, he was not alone.

“Balin!” Bilbo cried, though it came out in a rough scrape of a sound.

By the Lady, wasn’t he always thirsty these days!

Balin smiled in that wonderful, kindly way of his, and rose from his chair, which he had positioned thoughtfully near the foot of Bilbo’s bed, so that the hobbit would not have to turn his head to see him. He poured Bilbo a glass of water — again with the metal pipe! — and held it beneath Bilbo’s chin so that he could drink his fill. Then he offered Bilbo another drink (a sip of the pain tonic, this time) before offering the water once more, to wash away the bitter aftertaste.

“Oh, I’m so pleased to see you,” Bilbo said, once his throat was clear and he had cranked the backrest’s handle to lever himself up to sitting. He really was sorely relieved to see Balin, alive and well; this feeling snuck its way into Bilbo’s voice as a sort of sighing weightlessness. “You’re all right! I thought something might well have happened to you, in the time I’d Forgotten!”

“I’m not that old, laddie,” Balin said. He lowered his chin and looked up at Bilbo from underneath raised eyebrows, in a bit of a censorious glance. But before Bilbo could feel flustered, Balin grinned to show that this frown had only been a joke. “No, no, we all made it through the quest and the Battle afterwards. Everyone is safe and sound, under the Mountain.”

This pronouncement seemed almost to flatten Bilbo, making all his muscles go limp. “Really?”

He realized then that he had not even had time, truth be told, to start worrying that the rest of the Company may have been truly… gone. This news that everyone had survived produced a curious sensation: bliss at the understanding that he had nothing to worry about, combined with the sobering awareness that he had just barely avoided serious grief.

Bilbo heaved an unsteady breath. “Oh, Balin, I can’t believe it. We all made it? Everyone?”

“Aye. Everyone.”

Bilbo clicked his tongue and brought a hand up to cover his heart — a rather aunt-ish gesture, it must be said, but Bilbo figured he was allowed to be a bit of a biddy about this!

“Now, just to prepare you for the sight of it,” Balin continued in a forthright tone, “you should know that Fili wears a patch over his eye now, and Kili sometimes uses elbow crutches or a cane. They’ll both be happy to tell you their battle tales in due time, but for now, it’s worth keeping in mind that they’re safe and they manage the lingering pain well. There’s no need to worry.”

This was worthy news, as well, for Bilbo would indeed have worried. He liked the boys very much; they were cheerful fellows whom Bilbo was relieved to have present in the mostly-unapproachable Company, and the two of them had just been starting to warm to Bilbo's presence on the quest, last he recalled. He hated to think of them hurt, but it did help to have Balin remind him that they had made it through whatever violence they had encountered, in the end.

It was actually a little eerie, to keep having his worries snuffed out so soundly before they even had a chance to ignite. But Bilbo supposed Balin knew him well enough by now to understand exactly what he would need to hear, to ease his anxieties.

So Bilbo only replied, “I’m very glad to hear it. And there were no other injuries?”

“There were, but they resulted in scars, and arms that can’t raise themselves all the way anymore, and the like. Hard on the one who takes the blow, but not the sort of thing that’s very visible to someone else, so I will let the bearers tell you about it themselves, if they like. We were lucky, all in all.” Balin sighed and gave a little smile. “Very, very lucky.”

“I am… curious about this Battle,” Bilbo said, haltingly. He was curious, but he was also a hobbit and so his stomach started to turn at the thought of bloodshed and battlefields. “It always seemed to me as if you didn’t really expect any fighting, once we got to the Mountain. Only a bit of sneaking about and, um. Burglaring.”

Balin nodded a little but stayed silent. He was clearly considering what to say next.

“Was it the dragon, that you all ended up fighting?” Bilbo prompted.

Balin opened his mouth to reply, but then he hesitated. This silence turned into a chuckle, as he said, “Oh, Bilbo, I’m sorry to say: on the quest, we battled more creatures and living souls than I can lay out for you now. We fought the dragon, yes, but also goblins, orcs, elves, men, wargs, spiders, trolls… You’re going to be disappointed in us, when you hear what trouble we made of ourselves to near everyone we came across. Not polite at all.”

Bilbo blinked in surprise. He supposed it was rude to fight and row, but: “I’m sure it’s not my place to judge!”

Balin’s chuckle turned into a fully-blossomed guffaw. “It’s not! You were, after all, fighting right alongside us on a number of those occasions!”

Bilbo could only sit there and blink again, so fast that everything blurred for a moment.

“The Battle to which I refer came after we ousted the dragon,” Balin said. “But that doesn’t seem like the best place to start telling you the story of the last seven years. I wonder if you’d allow me to start from the beginning.”

“Well…” Bilbo was still shocked by the idea that he had– had fought people! Probably with weapons! And so hearing about the whole journey suddenly seemed an unimaginable ordeal.

But he tried to shore himself up for it, shifting his shoulders and bringing his hands down to rest at his sides, where they tweaked a bit at the bed sheets.

He said, doubtfully, “Well, all right.”

Balin watched all this fidgeting with careful eyes. After a moment, he propped his own hands — clasped together — upon his belly, and he settled back into his chair. He hummed thoughtfully.

“Now I’m wondering if that’s really the most useful place to start, either,” he said with a shrewd look that unnerved Bilbo even further. “After all, what happened seven years ago isn’t so relevant as what’s happening now. Shall I tell you of our Erebor? There’s a lot for you to learn, laddie.”

“Yes,” Bilbo agreed, a bit too quickly. But he could probably give up on the idea of seeming cool and collected in front of these people, who had known him for the better part of a decade and who now had him at a terrible disadvantage. “Please. If you don’t mind!”

Balin allowed him the out, and so instead of hearing about the quest, Bilbo sat back and learned about the wonders of Erebor reclaimed.

It took several visits from Balin to even scratch the proverbial surface of the rebuilt kingdom. There was much to tell, and Bilbo tired easily; Oin appeared to have a sixth sense for when hobbitish eyelids were drooping, and he was quick to come in and badger Balin out of the room.

Still, the old dwarf came back very often — multiple times a day, even, it seemed! And he knew so much about the Mountain, and spoke so authoritatively about its goings-on, that Bilbo knew he must be an important sort of personage in the running of the place: right up there with King Thorin II himself, surely. Bilbo marveled, then, that Balin had time to visit so frequently, since Bilbo could not be anyone of much consequence in Erebor.

It was very cheering, to think Balin had become such a true friend!

And so Bilbo learned much about the kingdom through Balin’s evocative descriptions, hearing about how Smaug had left much of the architecture under the Mountain intact, and therefore most of the construction work had been cleaning and refurbishment only —

And how many of the mines and guilds and workshops were now functional once more, staffed by dwarves who had come from all over Arda to resettle the Mountain —

And how, even now, formal trade negotiations for Ereborean goods were underway, and how these talks concerned not only other dwarven kingdoms, but also those realms of men to the distant south!

The menfolk nearer by, in Dale, were having a harder time rebuilding, Bilbo heard. Their town had been abandoned for decades and so remained exposed to time and weather as it might not have been if it were underground, as Erebor was, and in any case, the dragon had decimated nearly every building before it had burrowed its way into the Mountain all those decades ago. But now Erebor was assisting with the slow Dalish reconstruction — which Bilbo thought was very neighborly — and things seemed to be going well, as far as he could tell from Balin’s description.

And Balin was not the only person who came to call on Bilbo! Bofur was his other visitor. In fact, Bilbo noticed that he was hardly ever alone.

When he was not sleeping (though it must be said that he was sleeping a great deal), Bilbo had graduated from being fed and watered, only, to being fed, watered, and questioned about his condition by Oin or Yinka; either that, or he was greeted with the sight of Balin or Bofur sitting in what Bilbo had come to think of as the visitor’s chair, to the left of his bed and down near his feet.

It was a great deal of company to entertain near constantly, which Bilbo remembered now had not historically been his favorite way to pass the time. But he supposed he should be thankful. His head still hurt, no matter how much tonic he was given to drink, and his eyes could not focus enough for him to read, so books were not an option. He should take what distraction and entertainment was offered to him.

And Bofur, especially, was entertaining. He had been entertaining on the road, too, when he spared the time to talk to Bilbo, but now he was full of jokes and stories from the Blue Mountains that never taxed Bilbo’s mind, never required him to think too deeply.

Bilbo was well aware that he was being delicately handled — managed, really, to within an inch of his life — but it was such a relief to be carried away by the constant, steady stream of Bofur’s trifles and wisecracks that Bilbo could not begin to bring himself to care.

“I’ve heard all of these stories before, haven’t I,” he interrupted his friend to say, at one point.

(Bilbo was, at the time, cresting the heady feeling that was always delivered by the pain tonic, and it loosened his tongue.)

“Every single one,” Bofur agreed readily. “You’re really helping me refine my delivery; ta for that, by the way!”

So actually, being unwell in Erebor was a far (and much more joyful) cry from being unwell in the Shire. Here, Bilbo had friends who were happy to spend their valuable time informing and amusing him, and he had material comforts that Bag End could not have offered, summoned whenever he wished with only a ring of the little bell that sat by his bedside, within easy reach.

All he had to do was cast out a hand, and there would be Oin or Yinka, to bring Bilbo a glass of juice, or more tonic, or a hot water bottle, or a cool compress for his head, or a bedpan, or — on one occasion, simply because he was curious — a mirror.

When this hand mirror was brought to him, it was finer than any that Bilbo had ever seen in the Shire: perfectly smooth, clearer than a windowpane. And in it, Bilbo could see that he hadn’t aged a day. Not one.

He’d expected to look grizzled and world-worn, since after all, it had been seven years, and he had gone on a great, stressful quest in the meantime! But aside from the bandages over his wound, he looked exactly as he always had: brownish hair and blueish eyes and pinkish skin, with the same fine lines about his eyelids and mouth that had been there since his parents died.

He was even dressed in just what he might wear to turn in for the night at Bag End! His current linen nightshirt looked much the same as all the others that Bilbo had ever owned — though this one did have some intriguing geometric designs in bold black thread edging all along the deep neckline, which was tied closed at the neck with a small ruff. The high contrast of the embroidery was very daring, for a hobbit, but Bilbo found he liked it a great deal.

All in all, he looked perfectly healthy and plump, which he supposed was at least better than he had looked the last time he had seen his own reflection. That was back at the Prancing Pony, which had a mirror in its public room, speckled with age and trapped moisture. It was hung up high for the Big Folk, but was angled so that it could still show Bilbo the needful.

He remembered putting himself to rights using his image in that mirror: neatening his hair, straightening the fall of his jacket (which was already beginning to hang a tad loose on him from just two weeks of travel). He had been readying himself to join back up with the rest of the Company outside of Bree, trying to find the fortitude to get back on the road.

Bilbo hadn’t really liked what he’d seen, in that reflection. He had looked mousy and alone, because, well, that was what he was!

But at least his clothes had been clean; Bilbo remembered being grateful for that. He had sent them out to be laundered, taking advantage of the fact that he was staying by himself in a separate room from Gandalf’s and at an entirely different inn from the dwarves. Thorin had told him that would be best for obscuring their quest’s purpose. So he had sat curled up by himself in his hobbit-sized bed all evening, bored and near-naked and very chilly indeed, even under the cover of his bedlinens, as he waited for his clothing to return from the launderer. Some adventure! he had groused to himself.

…And really, Bilbo was back to thinking that same thing, right this very moment: some adventure! He couldn’t remember hardly any of it.

He had evidently traveled hundreds of miles, and presumably seen for himself the slew of creatures that Balin had mentioned, all of them right out of a fairy story: elves and goblins, trolls and ‘wargs,’ whatever those were. Not one of them had left any mark upon Bilbo that he could discern. The only thing that had really done him harm was this business with the rotted floorboard — which was the sort of injury that could have befallen him even in Hobbiton, whenever he stopped by the damp old Mill to pick up his weekly order of flour.

It was honestly astonishing! Gandalf had promised, way back when, that Bilbo would have a tale or two to tell about his journey out into the great wide world, and if he managed to survive the experience, he would return a different hobbit than the one who’d been living alone in Bag End for fifteen-odd years.

That had been a very grand pronouncement. But now Bilbo could roundly denounce it as absolute hogwash.

Bilbo Baggins had indeed gone off on a real smial-smolderer of an adventure, but he had come out in the end clean as a whistle. Hardly a mark on him, and certainly missing all the fantastical changes of character and staggering personal revelations Gandalf had prophesied — perhaps excepting Bilbo’s new conviction that dwarves were the best hosts for a fellow who happened to feel a bit ill, for their hospitality put any neighbor in the Shire’s to shame.

Take that, Gandalf, Bilbo thought to himself, feeling rather vindicated. Here he was, sitting in a luxurious bed in a grand dwarven city, the discomfort of the road far behind him, all burglary over and done with, the horrid fearsome dragon dead and gone!

I’ve managed to steal a wondrous adventure out from under your very nose, with nary an ounce of cost or hardship to show for it! Not too bad for the Bilbo Baggins who good-morning-ed you in the Shire all those weeks — well, years — ago, now is it?  

Not bad at all!

--

The question remained, however, of where Gandalf actually was. Bilbo would need him as a companion on the way back to the Shire, like as not, once he had recovered. With this new Forgetting, all of Bilbo's familiarity with Erebor was gone, and so his assistance in its rebuilding could only be needed less and less. And surely it was time to be getting back home to Bag End!

And so it happened that when Thorin Oakenshield finally returned to pay Bilbo a visit, it was just as Bilbo was turning this question about Gandalf over in his mind. Thorin, being King Under the Mountain, seemed like he would be more knowledgeable than most about the whereabouts of a wizard, and so Bilbo was glad to have a reason to look cheerful when Thorin walked through the door. Bilbo was well-practiced, after all, in finding such little mechanisms for tricking himself into being warm and polite to callers.

“Good morning, Thorin!” he said brightly. “Or perhaps you prefer ‘your Majesty’ now, O King Under the Mountain?”

At the moment, Thorin still seemed very somber, stiff-backed and diffident; apparently seven years, a great quest, and an even greater battle had not changed him much, either. He might have been more richly dressed, now, and his beard may have been a mite longer — but this only served to reinforce how distant and striking and regal he had always been, and continued to be.

But now he said, hoarsely, “Please. Call me Thorin.”

Bilbo blinked and tried to show no surprise at the King’s rough scrape of a voice. “Very well, Thorin! I’m glad to see you, for I’ve been meaning to ask someone: do you happen to know where Gandalf has gone off to? I assume he’s not here.”

“No, he is not.”

“Of course he isn’t,” grumbled Bilbo.

He thought of how Gandalf had not attended Belladonna Baggins’s funeral, nor sent any scrap of condolence to either the Took or the Baggins families — not when Belladonna died, and certainly not for Bungo — nor had he provided even a single firework to any part of the Shire for twenty years!

“He’s never there when you need him,” Bilbo said. “Although of course, he would say that if he isn’t here, that must mean we do not really need him at all.”

Thorin laughed, quietly and with an air of surprise. “Yes, you– I suppose I should not be shocked at how much you still recall of the ways of wizards, even given how little you remember of our journey. Gandalf makes an impression.”

Bilbo chuckled, too, and he could hear a hint of surprise in it to match Thorin’s.

This is going rather well, he allowed himself to think. Banter with Thorin Oakenshield! Bilbo couldn’t believe he had lived to see the day.

“We don’t know precisely where Gandalf is,” Thorin admitted. “But we have sent out a handful of ravens to seek him. I have taken the liberty of bidding him return to Erebor, so that he might examine you himself.”

“No, that’s perfect, thank you. Heavens know it’ll be ages before he arrives, but I appreciate the forethought.”

Thorin smiled in recognition of this thanks, but then his expression faded into something both grave and apprehensive. Bilbo realized that he had never seen the leader of their Company look quite so strained, so grey-faced — as if he were just barely keeping his stomach down.

Well, almost never before. It was the same expression, after all, that he had worn at Bilbo’s bedside about a week ago.

“Thorin, are you feeling all right?” Bilbo asked. “There’s no reason to trouble yourself with a visit today, if you’ve been ill–”

“No,” said Thorin, quickly. “I am well, thank you.”

Bilbo watched as the King shifted his weight upon his feet, and as his fingers seemed almost to fidget where they were joined in front of him. Bilbo was hesitant to ascribe any degree of nervousness to Thorin, who had always seemed consistently (and perhaps excessively) self-confident. Still, the movements of Thorin’s big hands were surprisingly delicate, irresolute.

“Oh, no,” Bilbo said, affected by this show of dread. “Is it bad news you have for me, then?”

Thorin very well might, after all. In the Shire, troubles and complications were known to accompany instances of memory loss: mostly personal problems, but sometimes legal ones, too. Folks suing the Forgetter for breach of contract, the Forgetter attempting to void legal agreements to which they no longer remembered consenting — that sort of thing.

And dwarves seemed a litigious bunch, even by hobbitish standards. Bilbo wouldn’t be surprised if there was some fluke clause in his contract that meant he was now considered legally dead, with no property rights or opportunities for torts redress, whatsoever! All his worldly goods might be getting auctioned off, right that very moment.

Which reminded Bilbo — what had happened to his share of the promised Ereborean treasure, anyway?

Thorin huffed out a little laugh again, interrupting Bilbo’s musings. But this time, the sound of it resonated with a great deal of cynicism.

“No,” Thorin said. “That is, I hope it is not bad news. But it is a matter I must discuss with you, all the same.”

He swiveled on his heels, as if preparing to pace, like he had been doing upon Bilbo’s waking– but then he seemed to think the better of it. He looked to his right, avoiding Bilbo’s eyes, and his fingers kept up their tiny movements, toying with each other. After another moment of silence, Thorin strode over to the visitor’s chair and sat himself down.

“There is much you should know about your status and occupation under the Mountain,” Thorin began, as if he were launching into some sort of very formal bedtime story. He met Bilbo’s eyes cautiously. “But I would begin with the matter of our relationship.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows — initially in mild surprise, but then he tried to adjust his face into something more neutral, more encouraging. He could not imagine what would make Thorin so hesitant. Perhaps they were not as friendly as Bilbo had thought. Maybe it had been wishful thinking, to assume that without the pressures of the road, he and Thorin might get along.

Thorin’s silence had held as Bilbo schooled his expression, but now the King took a deep breath and straightened his back another additional, impossible degree. Stilling his hands, separating them and settling them upon his knees, Thorin enunciated, very carefully, very clearly:

“You and I are married.”

And of course, Bilbo gasped. He wasn’t proud of it, and he regretted it immediately afterwards.

It was a real kicker of a gasp, too: so loud and pronounced that it might better have been produced by the shock of a prankster’s chilled hand to the back of the neck, at precisely the moment a storyteller reached the pinnacle of their winter’s tale. And so, it came across — to Bilbo, hearing himself — as a caricature of surprise, contrived and irreverent even as it was entirely genuine. The sound of it tore him from his shock as suddenly as his shock had torn into him.

“Terribly sorry,” Bilbo said, to make up for the silliness of his reaction. “Did you say– ‘married?’”

Thorin’s expression was fixed but dreadfully earnest. “Yes.”

“To each other?”

“…Yes. To each other.”

“Oh,” said Bilbo.

Married.

Married!

Bilbo may not have been able to remember seven years of his life, but he could absolutely recall glaring at Thorin’s back on the road out of the Shire and thinking, It’s a shame he’s so good-looking, otherwise I’d be able to write him off entirely.

Good-looking, ill-mannered Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, married to… Bilbo.

Married!

None of it made sense. This entire conversation simply did not follow, even though they were doing nothing more complicated than repeating each other’s words back and forth. Bilbo’s chin jutted forward, on instinct, as he tried to puzzle it through.

Married.

He had recovered enough from his injury over the past several days that his head barely twinged at such a sharp movement of his jaw, but he could feel his entire face puckering from the force of his confusion.

Married.

He wanted to ask, On purpose? and Are you sure? and What, would you say, was the reason we decided to marry?

“We are in love,” Thorin spoke after a stretch of silence.

He said this as if it were not the most absurd reason he could possibly offer, presumably in answer to that last unspoken question of Bilbo’s: the same question — Why? — that must be blazing unmistakable across Bilbo’s face in an expression so gobsmacked it had to be like he was screaming his perplexity out loud.

Oh, Bilbo would sorely love to be screaming out loud!

“All right,” was what Bilbo said instead, diplomatically. “But you’re… King? Here?”

That earnest look on Thorin’s face was receding into a guarded blankness. “Yes. And you are Consort.”

Before Bilbo could stop himself, his teeth and lips were set in a grimace, but he thought it was to his credit that he tried to disguise it, quickly, by nudging his lips to the side and working his mouth, rather than succumbing to the urge to throw up his hands and cover his face with them.

At least that solved the problem of the treasure. What was one fourteenth of a dragon’s hoard, compared to the entire kingdom it had been stolen from?

Bilbo’s mind raced through the various responsibilities a– a Consort might have: talking to important people, holding fancy state dinner parties, managing the complaints of a whole nation, advising his husband — the King — on matters of policy and governance, in public… perhaps even ruling in Thorin’s stead, on occasion! It was starting to make Bilbo feel truly ill.

He shooed his thoughts away from these nightmarish visions of courtly life, which seemed like nothing so much as a Took family reunion where everyone had an axe and a score to settle. However, all of this made him realize, with more uneasiness, “So I really do live here, in the Mountain. All the time.”

Thorin dipped his chin in acknowledgement.

“Oh, but– what has happened to Bag End?” Bilbo asked. His voice had gone rather small.

“It is safe, and the estate is intact,” Thorin said immediately — which was kind of him, of course, for he must know that the state of not only the smial itself but also its legal entail would be of great concern to Bilbo.

He would know this, if they were– married.

But then Thorin hesitated, before adding, “though you are currently planning to sell it.”

“No!” Hearing such a thing made Bilbo twitch all over in horror. He gaped at Thorin. “What? No, I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake. Bag End! I can’t possibly sell Bag End.”

Thorin smiled a little and shook his head, just minutely. “This is what I’ve been telling you for a year now. I have been trying to convince you to keep it, but you’re dead set on selling it to your cousin.”

“Not Lobelia!” Bilbo squeaked. He was so distressed, the corners of his vision were actually starting to blur.

“No.” Thorin’s smile grew, strange and affectionate. “Fosco’s son, Drogo. He is in the early stages of courting, and you say he will need a home of his own.”

Bilbo stopped to think about this, though his heart was still galloping in his chest like it could zoom off to the Shire and put a stop to all this nonsense at once.

Bilbo did like his young cousin Drogo quite a bit. Drogo had inherited the typical Bagginsish practicality and kindness without much of the usual dullness or pedantry, and he had altogether avoided any bad Bolger habits that might have been passed down by his mother, thank the moon and stars! Plus, it was true enough that he would need to buy a smial for himself, since the Baggins property on that side of the family — the Little Orangery to the north of Hobbiton — would go to Dora, Drogo’s older sister.

But to sell Bag End? To Drogo? Poppycock! Poppycock and– and– and balderdash!

“Has the sale been publicly announced?” It felt beyond foolish to ask Thorin Oakenshield, of all people, about the particulars of a smial sale, but Bilbo was not in a position to be picky about where he got his news.

And then there was the matter of how they were apparently married. To each other.

“Not yet,” said Thorin.

“Well, we cannot possibly move forward with such a process when I am in a state like this,” Bilbo said, trying to sound prudent rather than panicked. “I am sure Drogo will understand. Anyway, who on earth could he be thinking of wooing?”

Drogo may have been fully grown even when Bilbo first left the Shire for the quest, but he was a quiet, late-blooming sort of lad, never showing any interest in romance at all.

“The lass is Primula Brandybuck,” Thorin replied.

Well, the name didn’t ring any bells, but Bilbo had never kept up with the Brandybucks as well as he ought to have.

After a moment, Thorin clarified, “…the youngest daughter of your aunt, Mirabella.”

“Oh, goodness! Is she?” Bilbo felt his face flame. That would make Primula his first cousin: close as siblings, to many a hobbit. Most hobbits. He blustered on: “Well, be that as it may! I still don’t see how that’s any reason to sell Bag End!”

“I completely agree,” Thorin said, in the sort of voice that implied he had said this himself many times but had never before been listened to. “And the price you’ve been toying with is an absurd pittance! But you’ve said that Drogo will have a hard enough time of it as it is, not being the eldest, and he’ll likely have to live in Brandy Hall if he cannot get a good smial for a good price. Gorbadoc keeps a rich table, yes, but Mahal forbid a young gentlehobbit should have to surrender all his freedom to live in that rowdy household.”

Hearing this from Thorin — since it was both the longest and the most sensible speech Bilbo had ever heard pass his lips — was as shocking as all else he had told Bilbo this morning. It was a long moment before Bilbo could speak.

“You know quite a bit about the Shire,” he finally said.

Thorin smiled again, broadly this time, showing off his white teeth amidst his dark beard. Bilbo was a born fool, so the sight made his eyelids flutter, damn them.

The King said, laughing, “Ah, yes. You’ve kept me well abreast, over the years, of the drama and gossip unfolding between the Brandybucks and Bagginses and Tooks and Chubbs and Bolgers and Proudfoots.”

“Most would call them Proudfeet, you know,” Bilbo corrected automatically.

Thorin cocked his head and narrowed his eyes; the effect was playful. “Aye, but you would not,” he said knowingly.

Bilbo’s mouth fell open, just a touch. He could feel that strange sticky toffee sensation taking hold again, at this proof that Thorin knew him so well. But this time it was darker, and hungrier, centered not so much in his chest as in his–

Goodness!

“You’ve given me much to think about!” Bilbo exclaimed shrilly. His hands took hold of the blanket covering his legs and bunched it up over his lap. “I’m afraid– I’m afraid I’ll need some time to think it over. This has been– a lot of news.”

Saying this aloud reminded Bilbo of its truthfulness. The sudden arousal he had just been trying to disguise faded in the face of Bag End on the market, and the requirements of a royal office, and this preposterous, inexplicable marriage.

His preposterous, inexplicable marriage.

Bilbo could see more than sense the easy mood of the conversation evaporate, as Thorin’s grin slid away to be replaced by an expression of flat neutrality. Thorin had often regarded Bilbo with just such a look on the good days of the quest. It stung a bit to think that Bilbo had been disappointing Thorin even then, back when he had thought such a look meant that Thorin might be coming around to the idea of having a hobbit along on the journey.

“I will leave you to rest,” the King agreed in an affectless tone that matched his expression. He stood from his chair. “You may– You should ask me any questions you have, about your life here. Or ask them of any of the Company, or your friends among the citizens of the Mountain.”

He was silent for a long moment, to the point that Bilbo would have considered speaking if Thorin were not so clearly weighing his own words, preparing to continue.

“I am sorry you have not been able to receive more visitors,” he said at last.

(Bilbo barely contained another grimace: more visitors? He’d already been called upon so often!)

“But– none of us knew how best to reveal the news of our– the marriage to you, for we understood that your remaining memories of us might make such a relationship difficult to countenance.” Thorin’s voice had gone stiff and thready over the course of this last sentence. “The others were concerned that they might accidentally reveal too much, if they visited, and it was, after all, my responsibility to share the truth of the matter with you. So again, I apologize for the time it took me to prepare an explanation.”

“Oh, no apologies needed,” Bilbo rushed to say, since he felt a spasm of horror at the idea of hearing he and Thorin were married any earlier in his recovery. He might have had a heart attack. It was really for the best that Thorin had taken his time.

But Thorin was already grimacing and plowing ahead. Bilbo felt a queer coldness in his chest, to notice that the King’s eyes were beginning to glint tellingly, to go wide and red.

“You’ll be reacquainted with everyone shortly, now that the truth is out,” said Thorin. “I only ask that you give us opportunities to explain the circumstances that have led you here. That you– afford such opportunities to me, as well. Please.”

Bilbo was touched and a bit uncomfortable at this display of vulnerability.

“Of course!” he agreed, trying not to feel as if he were lying. “Thank you, Thorin. I will.”

Thorin nodded, and hesitated at the side of Bilbo’s bed in a way that reminded him of when he had first awakened and Thorin had paused with outstretched hands before leaving to go find Oin and Yinka. Bilbo realized that if they were married, perhaps some displays of affection were to be expected. His shoulders drew up tense without his say-so.

Thorin smiled tightly and left, leaving Bilbo in blessed solitude.

--

Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield had shared a grand total of four private conversations over the course of their acquaintance. Bilbo remembered the low number, because he had kept careful count of each one.

The first conversation had consisted of Thorin’s stiff gratitude to Bilbo for his hospitality the prior evening in Bag End.

It came at rather a bad time. The Company had been bedding down at the side of the road after their long day’s ride; it was not only Bilbo’s first night camping with the dwarves, but also Bilbo’s first night camping since the death of his mother.

In the intervening years, if he had needed to travel, he had hired carts to carry him to Tuckburough or Michel Delving. Occasionally, he took day trips walking through the Shire, and if once or twice he ranged further than he expected, he was always able to let a room from various pubs, to stay overnight. On the whole, however, this practice was thought peculiar and was rather frowned upon; because, after all, what hobbit needed to travel so far, without any family to stay with at the end of the road?

So there Bilbo was — terribly out of practice sleeping rough — when he discovered that, in his rush, he had not packed all the things he remembered from his camping trips with his mother, those things that might give comfort and ease on the road. He had a blanket, but no pillow and no groundcloth. He had a little cookpot, but no cutlery, save for a dulled knife that had already been at the bottom of Belladonna’s old pack. He had a few sets of spare clothes, and a towel for washing — but no novel, to keep his mind occupied. No pipe cleaner nor packing tool. No handkerchiefs!

Meanwhile, Gandalf was sat up against a tree — already asleep, judging by the angle of his hat and the slow pace of his breathing — and the dwarves, puttering about the clearing, were exclaiming over how pleasant the camping was in the Shire: how easy on the ponies were these low, lush little hills and how favorably did the land compare to others that the dwarves had traveled... and would travel, later on, over the course of this very journey!

Bilbo thought perhaps they were trying to compliment him on his home, for while they said that the Shire could not in any way contend with the beauty of a dwarven stronghold for craft or quarrying, they admitted that if you were forced to be above ground, you would certainly prefer the Shire to the Blue Mountains, or the Iron Hills, or even (and this they would not say in front of Thorin) Erebor itself.

So the dwarves thought the East Farthing to be a fair site for sleeping under the stars. Maybe! But Bilbo was already uncomfortable, sitting there sore from his pony and chafing in his sweaty clothes, afraid to light his pipe since he knew his supply of weed wouldn’t last long if he started in on it now.

To think: the dwarves thought this was easy! This was as good as it got! How much worse would the camping get, even a week from now? Not to mention the wild mountains they would all need to cross! Bilbo’s worries felt like burrs stuck all over his mind: difficult to pry off and almost impossible to put behind him, without their clinging close once more.

This meant he wasn’t in a mood to be very generous, when Thorin thanked him for Bag End’s food and shelter. When he did, Bilbo replied, with a perhaps regrettable shortness, “It was no trouble. Please don’t mention it.”

Because if Thorin didn’t mention it, Bilbo would not be reminded of his soft bed and armchair, his library bursting with all his favorite tales, his parents’ perfectly coordinated décor, and his excellent stock of Old Winyard wine.

Bilbo needn’t have worried, for Thorin didn’t mention it again, and didn’t talk to him for days afterwards.

The second conversation between Bilbo and Thorin was much longer, taking place a week later, though also while the Company was setting up camp.

The travelling had not gotten easier for Bilbo, in fulfillment of his aforementioned fears. He was constantly uncomfortable, and he was often lonely, for Gandalf was not always of a mind to talk and the dwarves were hardly ever of a mind to talk to Bilbo. Sometimes he could rope Balin or Bofur or Dori into a bit of a chat, but their talks rarely lasted longer than ten minutes. It only proved to Bilbo that the rules of dwarven conversation were not the same as hobbitish ones.

Hobbits were very good at speaking to fill space, careening hither and yon from topic to topic. While Bilbo often found the vapid patter of his relatives and neighbors tiresome, he was realizing now that it remained the only way he really knew how to talk, when you got down to it.

Dwarves, meanwhile, liked to have a reason to speak with one another — something specific, whether that was complaining or arguing or solving problems or trading favors or planning next steps. And when the issue at hand was resolved, the conversation was over.

Bilbo was unused to being so direct, in the case of complaining or arguing, and he had little to offer by way of expertise, when it came to the problems, favors, or plans that one needed to consider outside of the Shire. Plus, a minute-long conversation over where to pile the wood was barely a conversation at all!

And so he didn’t do much talking. As the journey wore on, he became more and more aware of his uselessness, and therefore increasingly used to his own silence.

This meant that Bilbo was at first surprised, when Thorin sat down next to him at the campfire and started speaking. But then Bilbo realized that he shouldn’t have been surprised at all, for the topic of Bilbo’s uselessness was the very subject Thorin wished to hash out.

Thorin explained that everyone else had some skill that might be useful on the road. Oin was a Master of Physick; Balin, amongst his many other skills, was an expert haggler; and Dori and Dwalin, between the two of them, could lift most fallen trees and loose boulders the Company might encounter. Even Gandalf had his magic.

Bilbo had been hired on as the burglar —

(the reminder of which caused Bilbo to sweat, for in truth he had never so much as picked a pocket or broken into a home in his life, and he wouldn’t want to start now, on the road, in the villages of the warlike Big Folk)

— and he had made that quip about conkers. But what other capabilities, Thorin asked, might Bilbo offer this quest?

Bilbo could tell that the following conversation about his purported skills rankled him and Thorin both. Because: Bilbo could not handle a blade. He could not throw a punch. He could not work wood or stone, nor mend with needle and thread. He could not hunt, and he had fished only once before in his life, an occasion upon which he had caught nothing. He could not swim. He could not lift more than three stone. He was acquainted with, but nowhere near fluent in, the speech of the elves, and he was afraid to ride a pony at any speed faster than a trot.

Thorin’s expression darkened as this string of Bilbo’s failings unspooled, and for his own part, Bilbo felt himself paling as they spoke, for he hadn’t realized that these were failings at all. He was a well-to-do hobbit with a deft hand at managing his estate and holdings. Why should he need to know how to sew? Why should he hunt or brawl, both of which were far beneath the dignity of any hobbit?

By the end of their talk, Thorin was as still as some exquisite stone statue, one that might have been commissioned to honor and personify the very concept of ‘disappointment.’ Bilbo meanwhile was exhausted.

But it had come out that Bilbo could climb trees, which the dwarves preferred to avoid, and he could cook, which he had proven to the Company at Bag End’s table. Thorin decreed that Bilbo should join Bombur in foraging and preparing the Company’s food, and that he should be prepared to scale anything tall or precarious, as well as take on whatever odd job the Company could trust to his meager skillset.

Then he left, and Bilbo mashed his lips between his teeth to distract himself from his own unhappiness.

The third conversation between Bilbo and Thorin occurred just before the Company arrived in Bree.

In truth, he and Thorin had exchanged words often enough, by this time, but in those cases, they had always been surrounded by the Company. Thorin would not even do Bilbo the kindness of scolding him where it would not be heard by all and sundry. No, everyone and their mother needed to be in the vicinity, apparently, when Thorin decided to shout about how Bilbo was not correct in his method of washing up in the stream, and not correct in his method of digging the latrine, and not correct in his method of waking Thorin to take the last watch!

For the love of the Lady!

Thorin did, however, take Bilbo aside to inform him that they would be entering Bree by next nightfall, and there, Bilbo was to stay in a hobbit-sized room, alone, at the Prancing Pony. Thorin and the Company would be taking what rooms they could find at another inn, the Eagle and Child.

“What!” Bilbo burst out at this news. “Oughtn’t I stay with you all?”

“Not if we would avoid suspicion,” Thorin said. “Why?”

Bilbo swallowed. Bree was–

Well, everyone knew only the strangest sort of hobbit lived in Bree. Tall hobbits, mean hobbits. Untrustworthy types. And this was not even to mention the Big Folk. “I am very far from home!”

“You are not even two weeks’ journey from your home,” Thorin corrected.

Bilbo huffed. He did not know how to explain that they might as well be a million miles away from Bag End and five hundred years in the past, for how foreign these parts were, compared to the Shire.

“It is not safe,” was what he settled on for a reply.

“Gandalf will be there with you, at the Pony,” Thorin said in what passed, for him, as a reassuring tone. “Though you cannot stay in the same room. I would not have it known that you are travelling together.”

Bilbo’s stomach tumbled with unease. It was rather silly, for it wasn’t even as if he would really miss the dwarves, or as if they would miss him! Of all the dwarves in the Company, Bilbo thought he could claim friendship with Bofur only — perhaps Balin, too, on a good day. No one else seemed to like him much; familiarity bred contempt, as Bilbo’s father used to say. So really, he should be glad for the chance at some solitude, as he had long enjoyed in the comfort of his own home.

But being alone in Bag End was not the same as being alone in Bree.

“I suppose you may take a meal with him,” Thorin allowed, after a moment of watching Bilbo stand there and wring his hands. “Gandalf’s love for the halflings is well known; that he should take a meal with you after chancing upon you in a pub would be believable enough.”

“But otherwise, it does not trouble you,” Bilbo scoffed, “that I should be an easy mark as a lone hobbit traveler!”

“You won’t be a target, if you keep your wits about you,” Thorin said. It was clear that he was beginning to tire of Bilbo’s pettifogging, and it was remarkable that his patience had lasted this far into the conversation. “And it remains that our journey is too important to risk drawing attention to ourselves: thirteen dwarrow, a hobbit, and a wizard in one party. An absurd assemblage, likely to spur rumor.”

“…Must we stop in Bree at all?” Bilbo asked.

Thorin glowered.

“You are the one who complains so often of the ro–!” Thorin started in a growl, but then he mastered himself with a sharp breath. He started anew: “You may sleep in the gutter for all I care, but we will pay for you to stay at the Prancing Pony, if you can stomach such an indignity as that.”

In the end, Bilbo did stay a night at the Pony, and what’s more, he braved the markets of Bree alone. He bought those goods that he had missed at the beginning of the journey: a new spoon and fork, plus a better knife to replace the one that had already been in his pack (though he could not stomach getting rid of his mother’s old blade entirely), a little tarpaulin, another towel, two handkerchiefs, and a new pouch of pipeweed (Southlinch strain, regrettably).

When he returned to the Prancing Pony, he did not take a meal with Gandalf, determined as he was to prove to Thorin that he needed no coddling (which the wizard clearly found very amusing, judging by the way his eyes twinkled at Bilbo from his own distant table across the taproom). After his shopping and his supper, Bilbo holed up in his little hobbit-sized room, sent his laundry out, and felt very lonely.

It was odd, how quickly he had become accustomed to the company of– well, the Company.

The fourth and final conversation between Bilbo and Thorin had almost been pleasant. Almost.

“This is good,” Thorin had said, over his portion of the evening meal.

“Sound more surprised, why don’t you,” Bilbo had groused under his breath.

Dinner was over for all except Thorin, who had elected to bed down and sleep through the early evening so he might be rested enough to take both the first and middle night watches. Bilbo was standing over the campfire and scraping the very last of the stew out of the cookpot with Bombur’s giant wooden spoon. As he ladled the stew into his bowl, he thought of who he might offer this final serving to.

He wanted to eat it himself, of course, but he had noticed that the Company didn’t take it kindly when he took seconds too often.

Maybe Gloin should get it; he’d seemed the hungriest fellow that evening. He had sat there for five extra minutes after the rest of the Company was finished, carefully cleaning the bottom of his bowl to lick up every last drop. Not like Thorin, who seemed to think it a miracle that Bilbo could cook something that aspired to any level of praise higher than ‘edible.’

“I apologize, Master Hobbit,” Thorin said. Bilbo thought he sounded very nearly amused. “I meant no offense. I just don’t care much about food, usually.”

Bilbo’s jaw dropped.

“You don’t care about food?” he seethed. He tapped the stirring spoon upon the rim of the cookpot with some degree of violence and, reeling from the suddenness of his revulsion and anger, he turned about to face Thorin–

–who was shoveling his stew into his mouth with great speed: not a mechanical, absentminded movement, but rather one born of eagerness. Enjoyment. Bilbo blinked to see Thorin lick his lips and use a knuckle to nudge a drop of broth upon his beard up into his mouth.

Thorin hummed in agreement. “Never much time for a good meal, and especially not on the road. Miserable fare, for the most part. This is very good, though, the flavor.”

Bilbo was still frowning. “That would be the ramson.”

Wild garlic — the folks of Hobbiton harvested it wherever they happened to find it, in the forest. They liked to keep it a surprise, rather than make any attempt to domesticate it. Bilbo had been keeping a look-out for patches of ramson plants; this afternoon he had been lucky enough to spot one.

“These leaves, you mean?” Thorin found one, blanched in the stew, and lifted it up with his spoon.

“Yes, indeed.”

“They’re good. For leaves.”

“They are,” Bilbo agreed, stiffly. This all felt like a bit of a trap. “I was glad to find them. There is much in a forest that will flavor a dish, if you care to look.”

“We don’t know how. Dwarrow have little herb lore — not for cooking, at least,” Thorin explained. “We don’t eat much of it fresh. Better fermented or dried.”

Bilbo had noticed this, watching Bombur sort his little canisters of dried herbs and ground-up spices. These were the only plants that Bombur seemed to use in his cooking, overlooking — and sometimes even stepping on! — perfectly good wild carrots, chicory, and mint, which Bilbo had started to gather on the Company’s behalf.

“Oh, but any harvest is always better fresh!” Bilbo exclaimed to Thorin. “Tastier and more nutritious. Especially now, travelling in early spring as we are.”

Thorin shrugged. “In our wandering days, several of my people sickened, eating what they found on the road or what had been given to us by men. We learned fresh was not safe, certainly not while travelling.”

Bilbo kept the pity off his face through sheer force of will. A person could indeed fall ill from foraging, even if they knew their herb lore; hobbits had hardier stomachs and better knowledge both, when it came to wild-grown food, but they would still grow queasy if they somehow mistook lily of the valley for ramson. A dwarf would fare much worse. And of course, there was no way the Big Folk would offer their best and safest foodstuffs to wanderers. Who knew what all they had used to pad out their sales of victuals to the dwarves? It didn’t bear thinking about.

And so Bilbo said, tactfully, “You’re right; drying and pickling are also perfectly lovely ways to prepare what greens you are sure you can identify.”

Thorin looked up at him from under his brows and said only, “Gracious of you to allow it, Master Baggins.”

He went back to eating the stew, and Bilbo crouched down to start cleaning the cookware. They had water tonight, for the washbucket, which Bilbo appreciated — the dwarves said clean sand was just as good to scour a plate or pot, but Bilbo didn’t buy it. He knew it was probably just hobbitish fussiness, but he would always find any cleaning done without water to be grimy and incomplete.

Not a problem tonight, however! He dealt with the cookpot and spoon first, and then started on the knife he had bought in Bree, the one he had used to mince up the ramson bulbs. After a moment of carefully scrubbing the blade, he heard Thorin stand, evidently done with his meal.

“Yes, that was very good.” Thorin said. It was the third compliment he had offered Bilbo that evening, and it made Bilbo turn over his shoulder to look at him. “We are indebted to you for your cookery. If I had access to a forge, I’d make you a better knife in repayment. It would be the least I could do.”

He cast a disdainful look toward the Breeland blade, as if it were such a sorry specimen that to fashion something better would indeed involve the least possible effort on his part. It was almost a joke, and Bilbo laughed, deciding to take it for one.

“Menfolk! They really will not share their best, such as it is, with anyone else!” Bilbo said.

He was affecting knowledge of the outside world that he didn’t really have, but he felt a touch of righteous indignation, at the thought of the bad treatment Thorin had received at the hands of men. He also felt a little emboldened by Thorin’s rare good mood.

The dwarf smiled, just a bit. At the sight of it, and of Thorin lingering there in their shared conversation, Bilbo felt as if his heart had climbed up through his throat, into his skull, and was now sitting there, pounding between his ears.

“Is that what you do?” he asked. He wondered if he could keep Thorin talking. The combination of good conversation and good food had sometimes been known to thaw a feud, in the Shire.

Thorin tilted his chin to the right. What do you mean?

“Bofur is a toymaker, Oin is a doctor, Ori is a scribe. Do you– Are you a smith?”

“Aye,” Thorin said. “It is my calling.”

“Oh!” Bilbo cried. Maybe he sounded too eager, but he was quite pleased to learn this personal detail about Thorin. It served to make him almost approachable, in contrast to his usual stiff-backed standoffishness while riding at the head of the Company.

“Do you enjoy it? Smithing?” Bilbo kept going.

“Aye.” This time Thorin smiled in earnest. He repeated, “It is my calling.”

Bilbo blushed. “Oh, you–!” He felt almost dizzy, to be joking a bit with Thorin Oakenshield. It made him chatter on: “You know, before this journey, I thought that every dwarf was a blacksmith. That you were all born in a forge, knowing how to cast metal from your first breath!”

And Bilbo knew he had said the wrong thing right away. It was as if he had blown out a candle.

Thorin’s smile went flat, and he cast his gaze downward in a flash. “There is no one category that could contain all dwarrow, and especially not that one.”

Bilbo spluttered. “I’m sorry–!”

“I know well enough what outsiders think of us, Master Halfling. I suppose that particular belief is the best of a bad bunch.”

“I don’t–! Not anymore, I don’t think that anymore–”

“It was a fine meal. My thanks.” And with that, he left his bowl beside the washbucket and stalked off.

Bilbo felt like he had been slapped.

Well! The very nerve!

And to think: Bilbo had been about to offer Gloin’s extra portion to Thorin instead!

For Bilbo, now, this last conversation had happened only three days before he’d awoken in his Ereborean sickbed. Over the course of those three days, his mind had kept supplying him with retorts he wished that he had been quick enough to use, the moment that Thorin had turned on him. Even now, his brain reverberated with many such biting afterwits.

Oh, so it’s perfectly fine for you to call me a green grocer?

When we had only just met, and you knew nothing about me?

But I may not call you a blacksmith?

Which you are?

But any rejoinder would be seven years out of date, at this point, and it would be bad form indeed, to raise a quarrel with his husband over such a passing thing.

Chapter Text

“Now, tell me,” said Ori. “What is the metaphor that you feel best describes your experience, so far?”

Ori was sitting in Bilbo’s usual visitor’s chair, to the left of the bed. He had some sort of mechanical pen in hand — of much better quality and much greater convenience than the quills Bilbo was used to working with in the Shire — and he was poised to write down today’s conversation, in anticipation of a chronicle concerning Bilbo’s memory loss.

Bilbo was Consort of Erebor, and so the story of Bilbo’s life was very important.

Bilbo looked at this pen, hovering eagerly over Ori’s notebook page, with no little envy. He had spent two weeks now recovering from his injury, and in that time, he had learned that he’d spoken too soon when telling Yinka that hobbits’ eyesight was not affected by head injuries. In fact, Bilbo’s sight blurred quite badly if he attempted to focus it on anything closer to his face than a couple handbreadths away.

Doing his own reading and writing was therefore entirely out of the question. Even composing a verse or two in his head was exceedingly difficult, as he could hardly spend ten minutes thinking silently to himself before he wound up asleep.

Truth be told, reading and writing and composition were only three of the very many things that Bilbo missed from his life alone in Bag End. Scouring the Farthings for new books by foot and via letter, cooking up whatever recipes caught his fancy, discussing possible commissions with his tailor, tidying up the smial, taking jaunts outside — there were so many activities he had once used to fill up the day!

Here in Erebor, injured as he was, he could really do no more than decide whether he wanted to be lying down or sitting up, and neither option involved getting out of bed.

The novelty of being off the road had well and truly faded, and now he found himself soundly homesick and more than a little bored. But he was not, evidently, going anywhere: not out of the infirmary, nor back to the Shire, nor anywhere else, really.

Because Bilbo was Consort of Erebor. His recovery, here, was very important.

“Sorry: what do you mean, ‘metaphor for my experience’?” Bilbo asked, attempting to wrestle down his jealousy and yearning and agitation so that he might focus in on his new– his old–?

Well. His kind friend, Ori.

“I mean,” the dwarf clarified, “what sort of thing would you liken it to, losing your memory?”

Bilbo snorted. “I daresay it’s like losing your memory. That’s it. It is a fairly straightforward thing!”

Ori gave him a withering — though clearly affectionate — look, one that Bilbo didn’t know quite what to do with.

“Bilbo. What’s happened to you is… going to be hard for dwarrow to accept. Balin and I have been talking it over — you know, what we’re going to publicize to the Mountain — and I have to say: we’re struggling with the narrative. An accident is one thing, but to have so many memories wrested from you– and not even from age! From a fall! From a fall in Dale, down amongst the menfolk!”

Here Ori’s gingery eyebrows shot straight up and his hands spread so widely and urgently that the fine pen Bilbo had just been admiring clattered to the floor, and Ori immediately had to scramble to retrieve it.

“Well, it sounds horrible,” he said in a huff, once he was back upright. Bilbo watched him fiddle with the pen nib to make sure it wasn’t broken. “That’s all I’m saying. You have the fealty of the whole Mountain, and we’ll have a riot if people think that the men of Dale are to blame for such an ill fate. But see, I know you yourself wear a poet’s cap now and again–”

(Bilbo nudged his mouth to the side, to hear that Ori knew of his versifying. This was a bit of an embarrassing hobby of his, and he’d learned not to let it become common knowledge. Up til now, in Erebor, apparently.)

“–and so you know that readers come to understand and… accept things by way of metaphor and simile — by way of comparison! Take Durin, for example.”

“I’m afraid I am not familiar,” Bilbo said, after Ori had waited expectantly for a moment. “Or if I was before, I don’t remember now.”

“Oh! Of course, Bilbo; I’m sorry! Well.” Ori fluttered his hands a little, before settling them in his lap, over his notebook, and sitting up straight, as if he were about to declaim. This was fitting, for he launched into a story that did rather have the practiced tone of a speech long-memorized:

“Durin is the name that we use for the eldest of the Seven Fathers of our race, and the ancestor of all the Kings of the Longbeards, of which Thorin, son of Thrain, is most recent. Durin slept alone, until in the deeps of time and the awakening of our people, he came to Azanulbizar, and in the caves above Keled-zâram in the east of the Misty Mountains, he made his dwelling, where afterwards was the kingdom of Khazad-dûm renowned in song.

“There he lived so long that he was known far and wide as Durin the Deathless. Yet in the end he died before the Elder Days had passed, and his tomb is in Khazad-dûm; but his line never failed, and five times has an heir been born in his House so like to his Forefather that he received the name of Durin. And so he is indeed held by us dwarrow to be the Deathless that returned. It is known that he will have awakened seven times before the dwarrow disappear from this world.”

Ori was quiet for a moment, to let this recitation land; Bilbo blinked a bit, for the cadence of it had indeed cast rather a spell over him.

“Scholars and clerics have quibbled and squabbled and scribbled over Durin,” Ori continued, back in his usual tone of voice: candid, inquisitive. “Enough to fill whole rooms with paper about the exact mechanism of his reincarnation! It’s very complicated. But the story the laypeople receive is that he sleeps and wakes, sleeps and wakes, and will come again once more before our time is done. Do you see? It’s a metaphor.”

Bilbo hummed. He did see.

“Balin and I need to craft a story about what has happened to you: a version that people will accept, that they can find meaning and comfort in,” Ori said. He smiled encouragingly. “Something easier to swallow, as you would say!”

Bilbo nodded. That was the sort of hobbitish thing he would say.

“So.” Ori brought his pen back to his notebook. “If I don’t suppose it’s like waking up disoriented? Maybe after a long sleep?”

At this, Bilbo couldn’t help but sputter out a laugh. “Are you sure the answer is to make me into Durin?”

Ori blushed. “No, no! But. I guess I thought the whole thing might fit you, too.”

“Well–” Bilbo let his smile fade, as he considered what metaphor Ori might like to use.

…Bilbo wouldn’t be using it himself, that was for sure. He felt an immediate resistance to the idea that his Forgetting needed any such thing to make it palatable. No one in the Shire used any metaphors for it! Euphemisms, yes; those certainly made everything go down easier, Forgettings included. But a metaphor relied on truth rather than politesse, and there were no metaphors for this that Bilbo could remember, nor any similes.

And anyway, the fact that he had Forgotten these last seven years was just a part of his life, now. He was embedded so deeply inside the sensation that there was no way to step outside of it, nor step around it — no way to pick it up with his hands and examine all its sides, its components and characteristics. It was not a thing he could swallow, or make anyone else swallow for him.

It felt like he was living the memory loss, and he was. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

But Ori had asked for a metaphor: likeness, similarity. And so: what to say?

Was the memory loss the same as being reincarnated, as it was for Durin: closing your eyes as Durin III and waking up generations later as Durin IV, in a world that had changed completely in your absence? Was it knowing that you are, at that very moment, asleep — seeing yourself as both the dreamer and the dream, trying desperately to wake? Or finding yourself trapped in someone else’s body, knowing your own identity but waiting for everyone else to realize that you were not who they thought you were? Or did it make you into some useless part tacked onto a perfectly oiled machine — the wrong spare wheel that would only, inevitably, disappoint when it was put to use?

No, it wasn’t that. That sounded just the way it felt to be a hobbit pretending to be burglar whilst accompanying a dwarven company hither and yon. And that clearly wasn’t what Bilbo was up to, anymore.

“I’m not sure,” was what Bilbo told Ori. “I will have to keep thinking on it.”

--

Bilbo was embarrassed to say that his mood had worsened quite badly, in the days following the joyous news of his own nuptials. But really, hearing that he and Thorin were married had nothing much to do with it! Not at all!

For one thing, Bilbo had started the therapeutic neck exercises that Oin had warned him about, back when they first assembled Bilbo’s fine dwarf-made backrest. These exercises were surprisingly intense — lots of rolling his neck and nodding his head and flinching when he pushed himself too far — and they were made only worse by the fact that Bilbo was being weaned off of his pain tonic at the same time. It made his head ache, and it made him aware of all the bruises on his body that had come from his fall through the scaffolding in Dale.

The entire world, therefore, felt harsher and more uncomfortable than ever, despite the fact that nothing had really changed about his sickroom accommodations. Bilbo was assured that his head and neck were healed enough now to support their own weight for a few hours every day, when Oin periodically removed the neck support on the backrest. But the change felt personal, vindictive — even though Bilbo knew it was for his own good, in the end.

And the food he was receiving! If you could even call it that!

Porridge flavored with hardly any honey, toast served with no butter, and apricots about which nothing much could be said aside from the fact that they were raw, sliced, and not-quite-ripe. They were not even stewed with cloves! Not even baked in cinnamon!

It was the sort of food you might give a hobbit on their deathbed, and only then if you held a wicked grudge indeed against said hobbit.

Now, Bilbo would never be so rude as to raise a fuss over someone else’s cooking; it was unheard of for a hobbit to think themselves too good for any dish! But evidently, tastiness was too much to ask of dwarven cuisine (of which Bilbo already held an admittedly low opinion, from his time on the road).

When he had gone as far as his manners would permit — remarking openly (openly!) to Oin that his meals really were quite… simple, weren’t they? Pared down, even? — Oin had only replied with a wink:

“Aye, lad! Nothing but the finest for you.”

So Bilbo had simply smiled, and had made show of taking an appreciative slurp of gruel. Ah, well. As absurdly slim as the pickings were, he mustn’t forget that Erebor was a recently reclaimed kingdom, one that was perhaps still poorly-resourced. Of course he was getting the best the Mountain had to offer!

And then, of course, there were the visitors. Just as Thorin had promised.

Maybe Bilbo had grown to actually enjoy it when people came to call, living as he had in Erebor for the past seven years. Stranger things had happened (probably). But the Bilbo who sat in this sickbed — who had not, for all intents and purposes, even gone on the quest for Erebor! — felt he had been quite well-occupied by visits from only Bofur and Balin. Filling out his social schedule even further was torment.

Oh, he could handle an At-Home in the Shire just fine, especially back when his parents had been there to play host: his father buoying the conversation along and his mother meeting Bilbo’s eyes over the crumpets to laugh-without-laughing at their guests. The older visitors had tended to leave Bilbo alone in favor of speaking with Bungo and Belladonna, and there were usually some younger relatives tagging along, besides, with whom Bilbo could gossip and joke away the visiting hour.

But then Bilbo’s parents died. And all those young people Bilbo had used to giggle with grew up and got married. Social calls became universally tiresome affairs, where relatives asked-without-asking for money or favors, and Hobbiton gossips stopped by to pry into his affairs, and old family friends popped out of the woodwork to shove their marriageable sons and daughters under his nose.

And now, after all that, here he was: Consort of Erebor. He was married. He was royalty. He held a position of leadership in the community, which was exactly the sort of thing he had gone out of his way to avoid in Hobbiton. Bilbo could have made ice cream for the whole bloody Mountain, the way the idea made his stomach churn!

Well, the only way to get through these new social requirements, Bilbo decided, was with the same forbearance he was currently using to suffer through the tasteless infirmary cooking:

He needed to remember that he was really only a guest here, under the Mountain.

A few weeks ago, he may have been Consort in truth, but now he had no memory of that role, and in any case, he could not imagine the dwarves of Erebor had been terribly happy to be ruled over by a hobbit, even back when his memory was intact. He must surely survive in this place sustained by Thorin Oakenshield’s generosity and– affection– and–

And, well, the Company’s support, obviously! …And maybe some general Ereborean gratitude for the whole business with the dragon, depending on whatever it was he had become brave enough to actually do to the fell beast. And he must surely have fattened up at least some of the dwarves under the Mountain with his attempts at good, tasty, upstanding hobbitish cooking — though it seemed clear from his sickroom meals that none of that had caught on! Tragically!

So, yes: he was likely owed some degree of gratitude and deference. He could see that his hosts wanted him to be comfortable. But all the same, Bilbo’s tongue stalled behind his teeth when he thought of asking for more. He could not help but recall that last night in Bag End before the quest: when he had strained his voice darting all about his kitchen, trying to save his pantry from an invasion of dwarves, and to no avail.

In the here and now, seven years later, Bilbo quailed at the thought of doing even a quarter as much. He was exceedingly aware of how far he was from the Shire, and the risk he ran of saying the wrong thing. He knew the dwarves would not throw him out — he was Consort! And yet he was no Consort at all, the entire scope of his kingdom a loaned sickroom.

The bottom line was that Bilbo felt in no position to raise a fuss about anything, and therefore found himself quite at his leisure to entertain guest after guest after guest.

It started with the Company — not all of them right away, because they were taking Bilbo’s own advice: explain things gradually, let the Forgetter readjust to their life, let them meet new faces, reacquaint themselves with the old…

No, just a few of his old travelling companions at a time, over the span of many days.

Bofur returned and brought his brother, Bombur, along with him, and then one day Oin sat his own brother, Gloin, down next to Bilbo’s bed while he did his rounds.

Then Ori began to call, and later in the week, he brought along Nori and Dori. The three of them set upon the sickroom like a little group of sparrows, of the sort that had used to gather in chattering flocks at Bilbo’s birdfeeder back at Bag End.

The day after that, Balin arrived with Dwalin in a much statelier fashion, like two birds of prey descending from their lofty lanes of flight.

And so they traded off with each other: again, and again, and again.

These visits were not– bad. Bilbo tried to remind himself of this often.

The dwarves were so kind that it could hardly be more evident that they considered Bilbo a dear friend; they regarded him with warm eyes and spoke to him with great familiarity, even though they tried to avoid presuming what he did or did not know of their lives in Erebor. No, they were very generous, and endlessly patient, in their explanations of what had changed in their lives over the past seven years.

But for all their careful neutrality, they could not hide the clear fact that they had been very, very close with the old Bilbo, the Bilbo-that-was. This affection was shockingly different from the treatment Bilbo remembered receiving on the quest.

After all, it wasn’t three weeks ago, to Bilbo’s mind, that Bombur had been avoiding eye contact with him at every opportunity, and had taken great care not to brush hands or even shoulders while they leaned over the same cookpot. But now he spoke to Bilbo with complete ease, and clasped Bilbo’s hand in both of his at the end of his visits.

And before Ori, Nori, and Dori visited his sickroom, Bilbo had never once shared a direct conversation with Nori! Not one! But all of a sudden, he was offering to come in and read aloud to Bilbo, since the hobbit must be bored out of his skull and no one in the Company would be a better candidate!

“Dori’s such a ponce, he’ll start fussing over the sound of his own voice and forget what he’s meant to be reading.” Nori laughed and dodged Dori’s slap; he had to dodge another from Ori when he continued, “And Ori’s such a bookworm, he’ll stop every other word to try and discuss the phrasing with you. Completely hopeless. You’re better off with me, for sure.”

Bilbo understood, of course. Living alongside someone for seven years was bound to produce a greater affection for them than you would get from merely being acquainted, over a month on the road. But all the same, he could not help but shy away from it, this closeness, even though he had longed for it for the entire time he could remember of the quest.

Back then, the dwarves’ casual exclusion of him, from their conversation and from their friendship, had been shocking: not intentionally cold, nor cruel, but still so different from what Bilbo was accustomed to, in the Shire. He was not close with many people there, either, but at least they had tipped their hats to him on the roadway, and had made chitchat with him at parties by asking after his health and the state of the Baggins tenantry, and had included Bag End in their schedule of social calls — often enough to get their hands on his seedcakes at least once per week.

Now, seven years later, the Company was not distant. Not a bit. They could not hide that they loved him. They seemed to be taking care not to introduce too much intimacy into their acquaintance too soon, but the dwarves were very blatant in their overtures of friendship, nevertheless.

Their love, now, was as far a cry from Shire politeness as their old neglect on the road had been, before.

So it made Bilbo nervous. It felt sudden, and it felt like presumption, even though Bilbo knew it was neither. He wanted to protest that the dwarves simply didn’t know him like that, but the plain fact of the matter was that they did know him — or at least, they knew the version of Bilbo that had lived for years and years in Erebor. If anyone’s feelings here were wrong, it was Bilbo’s.

--

If you had asked him — before he’d awakened in Erebor — who amongst the Company Bilbo would most dread speaking to alone… of course he would not have told you. To lay claim to any opinion on such a subject would be unspeakably rude!

If you had somehow managed to be Bilbo’s close confidante — which would have been difficult, as Bilbo did not really have any of those — and if you had really, really pressed him on the topic, he would have admitted that speaking with any member of the Company brought him some degree of unease.

But privately, to himself only, Bilbo would have acknowledged that it was Bifur with whom conversation presented the most worry.

It wasn’t anything personal, Bilbo always told himself! It was just a matter of the bare mechanics of speech!

At Azanulbizar — the same battle which had earned Thorin, son of Thrain, the epithet “Oakenshield” — Bifur had received a lasting injury to the head that impacted his speech. Bifur could understand Common perfectly well, but if he wished to speak aloud, the only language that sprang to his mind was an antiquated form of the dwarves’ secret, sacred tongue.

Bifur could also, however, communicate through Iglishmek, which was the name of the dwarven language of handsigns. Each dwarf learned it at a young age for use in noisy mines or amongst outsiders–

“–such as yourself,” Bofur had said to Bilbo whilst explaining his cousin’s injury, back in the very early days of the quest.

This, obviously, could only serve to underline for Bilbo that he understood Iglishmek about as well as he understood the secret dwarven speech, and as a foreigner, he would be invited to learn neither.

When they first met, Bofur had approached Bilbo about Bifur’s injury in an aggressively friendly sort of way, visibly heading off any untoward inquiries or obvious expressions of prejudice. Bilbo had understood back then why Bofur would do so —

(and he understood it even better now, having his own head injury that he would surely need to explain and endure questions over, endlessly)

— but Bilbo hadn’t been raised in a barn, and so he would never have questioned Bifur about his wound, nor would he have asked any of the Company to tell tales about it behind his back, either!

But the fact remained that Bifur could not communicate with Bilbo directly, and Bilbo had nothing important enough to discuss with Bifur that would justify bothering another dwarf to act as translator.

What’s more, Bilbo could not escape his own guilty knowledge that if the Company were made up only of dwarves, they might all speak in their secret language openly, without fear. And he could see why they would be willing to put up with Gandalf — who was a wizard, after all, even if he was not a very impressive one, and who was the sort of worldly person, much embroiled in international politics, who might already know the hidden language just as a dwarf would, despite being three feet too tall to pass for one.

In comparison, Bilbo wasn’t anything worth having on the quest: not a wizard, not a diplomat, not a soldier — not even, frankly, much of a burglar. So there he was, forcing Bifur to stay silent for no good reason at all! The awareness of the whole mess made it easy to keep his distance from Bifur when he could, since maybe the poor fellow could talk freely if Bilbo was far away.

Nowadays, of course, that wouldn’t really matter. Bifur had a whole Mountain to live and talk in, and even if Bilbo was up to walking about, he could surely wander Erebor for weeks and weeks without ever running into Bifur by chance.

But Bofur had said that Bifur was coming, by himself, to visit today. Out of his own volition or because he felt pressure from the rest of the Company, Bilbo couldn’t say, but Bifur was coming here, today, and Bilbo had no idea how he was going to fill the visit.

…Probably by doing most of the talking himself, in all honesty.

At least in the Shire people had brought their own gossip to Bilbo, even if he hadn’t much cared to hear it. He had mostly just sat there and listened, just as he now spent his days sitting and listening to members of the Company. Today, though, Bilbo anticipated he would have to dream up much of the conversation himself, and that level of performing was tiring at the best of times. It was hardly the best of times.

But, well, it wasn’t the worst, either, was it? Small mercies!

In any case, when Bifur turned up that day as his first visitor, Bilbo launched into one of several topics he had plotted out for the visit, in advance.

“Hello, Bifur! I hope you’ve had a lovely morning. The weather looks wonderful today; I can tell by the clouds — though of course, I can see how that wouldn’t matter much under the Mountain! I don’t suppose you find yourself outside very often. I remember Bofur telling me that you and he and Bombur used to mine for your living, but it was never clear to me if you really relished being down in the mines or if that was just your profession. I would find it difficult not to see the sun all day — maybe for many days! — but I am a hobbit and so I am sure me saying such a thing is of no surprise to you.”

Bilbo’s head had been turned and he had been peering out the window, gearing up to do quite a bit more prattling, when he felt Bifur’s hand fall lightly upon Bilbo’s shin where it was stretched out beneath the bed covers. This succeeded in getting Bilbo’s attention, and when he looked Bifur’s way, he saw that Bifur’s hands were beginning to gesture, much more slowly and broadly than Bilbo had noticed them moving during the quest.

Once Bilbo bothered to watch them, he– read? heard? saw? those hands saying: –morning. How are you feeling?

Bilbo gaped.

How was he feeling!

“Oh, I can–!” His eyes flew between Bifur’s hands and Bifur’s face. “I can understand!”

Bifur grinned and rocked a little on his seat in the visitor’s chair.

Yes, good, he said. It’s Iglishmek.

Iglishmek!

It was a curious sensation, Bilbo thought, to see rather than hear Bifur’s speech, and it felt even curiouser to consider how the meaning of that speech reverberated through his thoughts. The gesture-signs seemed to contain entire ideas, rather than singular words, and its grammar reorganized itself in Bilbo’s mind in an almost inexplicable way.

This in turn forced a reorganization of his assumptions about Iglishmek in the first place. It was no mere vehicle for the translation of Common or of the dwarves’ secret tongue, but truly a language in its own right — which was a reality Bilbo had never considered, nor seriously contended with, when offering Bifur polite smiles on the road towards Erebor. And now here he was, understanding Bifur’s signs! Understanding them, after undergoing no learning that he could remember!

Bilbo realized he had been silent for a good long while, stunned by the prospect of an entire language lurking in the recesses of his own mind.

“By the Green Lady!” he blurted. “I still know it! I had no idea such a thing could be possible!”

Bifur shrugged, but his smile did not dim at all. Now, you try. You sign with me, when we talk. For practice.

Bilbo stared down at his own hands at the suggestion, and then clasped them hard in his lap. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly.”

I bet you remember. If you understand me, I bet you remember. How are you feeling?

Bilbo cleared his throat against his sudden fear of fouling up the gesture-language, but obediently, he loosened his hands and brought them up in front of him. He noted that he was twiddling his fingers — unconsciously hobbitish — and forced himself to stop. But when his hands were still, nothing came to fill them. He stared at them for a moment before using them to cover his eyes.

“Maybe it’s– unilateral, and I can only understand you, and not, um. Speak myself,” Bilbo said, lowering his hands with a grimace. “Sorry, I don’t–”

Don’t think so hard, Bifur said. He shrugged and glanced away in a showy manner, as if it didn’t matter to him in the slightest if Bilbo ever made a successful Iglishmek sign in his life. Try.

Bilbo blew out a breath and looked away from his hands, too, wondering if Bifur knew how absurd it was to recommend Bilbo not think so hard. He likely did know, was the thing; Bilbo had often felt as if he were thinking twice as hard and half as usefully as the dwarves he was traveling with, on the quest, and he was sure the dwarves, for their part, had noticed his fretting and rolled their eyes over it.

‘Don’t think so hard.’ Bilbo raised his hands again and tried to float, rather than steer, the direction of his thoughts back to Bifur’s opening question: how are you feeling?

Good morning, he thought his hands said. I am well.

Bifur smiled again, watching Bilbo’s shock at his own success. I’m glad to hear it.

“This is incredible!” Bilbo exclaimed. He shimmied his way to sit up more fully against his backrest, quick as he could with his still-tender head and neck. He couldn’t help but say it again: “This is incredible! By my soles, do I really speak Iglishmek?”

You’ve been learning. Bifur’s gestures swept from far behind his back to just in front of his chest, which Bilbo recognized as an indication of verb tense: a sort of… present perfect progressive, maybe, suggesting an ongoing action that started long ago.

Bifur continued: You’ve been learning — And here he made a sign that resonated through Bilbo as “secret-dwarven-language” — too. But I thought: Iglishmek is better to try for today than secret-dwarven-language.

Bilbo tried to make that sign himself. “Can you say this out loud?” Secret-dwarven-language. “I know it’s secret. Private. But could I– may I learn the name?”

Bifur seemed to come up short, with a look of surprise, and at once, Bilbo worried that he had offended by asking too much. He had probably known the name of the secret language at some point, but with the Forgetting, it was gone — alongside everything he had done to prove himself worthy of having the name shared with him!

But Bifur said, in a voice like falling rocks, “Khuzdul.”

He repeated the gesture-sign; as might be expected, it was a small, private movement, made close to the chest with a pulse like a beating heart.

“Thank you. Khuzdul,” Bilbo repeated aloud, quietly but carefully. His hands, which had just been signing along with the name, were left poised and curved, as if he were preparing to cradle a child.

“And I’ve been learning Khuzdul?” he asked, then he signed, How long?

Five years. Four, for Iglishmek.  

Bilbo loosened his flexed hands; his next statement seemed too complicated for his current level of Iglishmek expertise and so they stayed still. “Your gestures don’t really look the way I remember seeing them. On the road, I mean.”

Bifur lifted an eyebrow, and then he let his hands move the way Bilbo recalled from their journey: fast, and so subtle that some of the gestures could be mistaken for the simple adjustment of clothing or hair.

Bilbo couldn’t follow it at all. He blushed. “That’s for my benefit, then.”

Bifur made a little wobble with his head: like a nod and a shake at the same time. It was a mannerism Bilbo recognized from Bofur, and he realized now that it had always been an Iglishmek sign. It meant, You think?

Bilbo laughed. “Fair enough, fair enough! Oh, but it’s just such a curious thing to remember! A whole language! I’ve no recollection of learning it, at all, but it’s like my hands know it more than I do. It’s unreal! Oin and Yinka will want to hear about this, I am sure.”

Bifur hummed, and his expression went considering. They ask you many questions?

Bilbo tried yes with his hands.

Many physicians ask you questions?

No, just Oin and– “Yinka.” Bilbo let himself get stuck for a moment; it appeared Oin had a gesture-sign designated for his name, but Yinka did not. His fingers spasmed, like he was reaching for some other way to– suggest? to spell? her name, but Bilbo had gotten distracted and so the impulse passed. After a moment, he started up again: And Ori.

Bifur tilted his chin and his eyes went mischievous. Ori! He’s such a–

And here Bifur made a curious motion: a single sign that Bilbo intuited more than translated. If pressed, he might say that it combined “intrusive” and “academically curious” into one noun. He supposed he would translate it as nosy-scholar, with an air of fond exasperation — and the compactness of such a gesture delighted him, for it was an incredibly specific idea!

I talked to too many physicians, back then. Bifur tossed a hand up towards the axe embedded in his forehead. I thought it would help get me a cure. But they were all only trying to study my story. Their questions were– Here Bifur made a sign Bilbo didn’t recognize, and on seeing this confusion, he tried something simpler. Too much.

“Intense?” Bilbo guessed. “Overwhelming?”

At this second try, Bifur bowed his head. Yes!

Sign it for me again? The gesture to ask this question was very practiced, which made Bilbo laugh. He must beg Bifur to repeat his signs constantly!

Bifur did, but then he said, Don’t worry about learning new signs. Don’t focus on that, right now. Tell the physicians to leave you alone, too. You need to rest. You need to rest more than they need to be nosy-scholars.

He continued, They want to hear about your injury so they can– Again, he signed something initially too complicated, and then revised to: so they can learn about it. And study it together. Good for building knowledge, not good for your rest.

Bilbo hummed, thinking of all the visitors he was getting, how flustered and fatigued they left him. But that was not really the same thing as prying physicians; these visitors were meant to be his friends, after all. And it was hardly as if Oin and Yinka were prying!

I know what a troublesome-head is like, Bifur said — with another of those strange combination words! Again, he gestured to the axe.

Not exactly what your troublesome-head is like, he continued, But similar. Talk to me about it.

And then he sat there, expectantly. It took Bilbo a moment to realize that Bifur was actually waiting for him to speak– to share!

“Um,” Bilbo said, very intelligently.

Well!

He felt rather ruffled at the prospect of putting his state of mind into words, let alone gesture-signs!

Because if Bilbo was being honest with himself, he would have to admit that he… had not been very honest with himself at all, of late. Not since the news of his marriage, at least. He had allowed his mind to skirt only the shallowest of sensations and emotions: irritation, drowsiness, comfort, amusement. Nothing deeper. Nothing more honest.

And that was fine, for the time being! Whilst he was depending on the kindness of near-strangers, it would have to be fine.

Bifur make an expectant gesture, and so Bilbo settled on saying: “I couldn’t begin to complain. This is a wonderful room, and I’m very well cared for. I feel much better than I probably ought, for being clobbered on the head!”

Bifur bristled. Bilbo watched him sway back in the visitor’s chair, just a touch; watched his head, with its black and white mane, rear back in confusion and affront.

You’re not even going to try? Bifur signed. He paused for a minute to blink wide eyes at Bilbo. You tried before, with Iglishmek! You’re not even going to try to be honest?

It took Bilbo a beat to parse what Bifur was saying. But when he did, his belly felt abruptly cold and hollow, and just as quickly his cheeks and eyes went hot.

He may not know precisely how to get his memories back, but that did not save him from being reminded, overpoweringly, of how Balin had once tasked Bilbo with starting the campfire, quite early on in the quest: handing him a little metal case and nodding him towards the place where Kili was already heaping branches.

Opening the case revealed a rock and a curved piece of metal lying on a bed of folded, blackened cloth, and Bilbo found himself completely stymied by this combination of… trinkets? tools? lighters? Evidently this was how dwarves started fires, and Bilbo could guess that Balin had chosen this very chore for him because it was so simple even he could not foul it up. But Bilbo had only ever struck matches to light the fireplaces around Bag End. His matchbox wasn’t foolproof — he was constantly taking it out of his pocket and leaving it who-knew-where about the smial — but at least he knew how to use it.

But out there, on the road, he had apparently stood staring at the little fire kit long enough for Thorin to come up behind him with a huff and snatch the case from his hands.

“I’ll advise you that even if you make no attempt to fulfill your duties, you will not weasel your way out of your share of the work, Master Baggins,” Thorin had groused, crouching before the fire. Behind him, Bilbo heard Kili snort out a stifled laugh and drop down another armful of branches.

Bilbo had noted, distantly, the way that Thorin curled his fingers expertly within the curved bit of metal, and how he forced it down against the rock shard to strike a spark into the cloth-lined case — but then Bilbo’s vision became too blurry and he had to excuse himself into the surrounding woods, to go pull himself together.

Now, here in Erebor, Bifur gestured broadly to regain Bilbo’s attention.

Talk to me! It will help, he implored. Bilbo realized then that his friend had not been accusing him of anything. You will get frustrated. That’s normal. Talk to me about it and feel better!

Bilbo sucked at his teeth.

He would like to feel better, it was true. But it was equally true that no hobbit would speak openly of any genuine anxiety: not to a mere acquaintance, at least, to whom such news would only be a disturbing imposition. You might certainly unburden yourself much as you liked to a family member —

(and Bilbo had often put on a show, for his parents’ amusement, of venting his irritation back in his youth, over the silly things his chums did at schoolhouse or pub or party or wherever)

— and it was perfectly reasonable to mither a bit in mixed company about sundry aches and pains and minor annoyances. But most lived in fear of being thought a Bender-of-Ears: a hobbit who did not realize the whole town was laughing behind their back for divulging far too much and much too deeply.

Now, a hobbit might make an exception if they found themselves in active peril… but of course, the dwarves had made it very clear to Bilbo that being wet — or cold, or hungry, or without a handkerchief — did not constitute peril. And Bilbo was probably as far from danger as he had ever been, at the moment! He’d meant what he said, about the beautiful room and attentive care; the dwarves were clearly doing their best to aid his recovery.

Yes, occasionally it felt like too much company, and no, the food wasn’t very good–  and to be sure, his Forgetting spanned a long stretch of memory, which Bifur had reminded him, however unintentionally, that Bilbo had no idea how to retrieve– and true, he was far from everything he had ever called home–

But to complain about these first two troubles would be plain poor manners, and while the second two might have been cause for some sorrow… Well, Bilbo was certain that, after seven years, the Shire did not miss him, so it was not much use missing the Shire. And he should be grateful that he still had any brains left at all, to put toward relearning his part in the quest!

I feel fine. Now. He tried to trust his hands to sign, hoping that Bifur would understand that Bilbo really was trying.

He searched for some sort of safe and honest grievance to share: something more sincere than the everyday bellyaching that Shirefolk trotted out when they wanted to say something and nothing at the same time.

Everything was strange. Bilbo signed. His hands faltered when he realized he was thinking too hard and fumbling his gestures. When I woke. I didn’t like– everything– strange. But now: I am tired. Healing. Learning. Trying–

He stopped signing before he could get out “to remember.” He had not remembered anything Ereborean yet.

That’s normal. Bifur was giving him a look of intense encouragement. It’s hard when everything is strange and different, Bilbo. You will get frustrated, and that’s normal.

Bilbo just smiled. He liked the look of his name in Bifur's hands: it started with his palms cupped widely but pressed together at the pinkies, like Bifur was reading from a book, but then his fingers flicked outwards and apart, like fireworks, or something vanishing.

But the repetition of the many gestures and the stress of trying to say the right thing, the expected thing, was starting to make Bilbo's head spin and hurt.

There must have been enough uncertainty on Bilbo's face to prompt Bifur to sign, extra slow, I need to be careful about talking a lot. It’s hard to think through Iglishmek when you’re learning. But talk to me when you get frustrated. Talk to others. We can’t always fix it, together. But sharing helps. I want to share it with you.

This was a generosity that Bilbo was not sure he deserved. He had, after all, not sought Bifur out as a friend at any time during the quest. He had felt comfortable ignoring Bifur entirely.

Back then, Bilbo had believed it was really best for everyone if he kept his distance. Now, he was less sure that his motivations had been so selfless.

He really had not been trying, back then.

What is it? Bifur asked. With his hand spread, palm facing Bilbo, Bifur made a tight circle encompassing Bilbo’s whole face from far away. Bilbo took this to mean that his discomfort must show there, in his expression, as loud as a roaming drove of steer, all wearing bells and lowing to each other.

“I’m sorry, Bifur,” he said, and then he signed it, too. I’m sorry. “I should have tried much harder to gain your friendship, back when we were traveling together. I don’t believe I made any attempt to speak to you at all; it felt too difficult. That was unkind of me, and it shows a lack of effort on my part that I cannot excuse or justify.”

Bifur’s face scrunched up dismissively. You didn’t know Iglishmek. We wouldn’t have taught you, back then. No way for me to talk to you.

“Still.” Bilbo’s hands echoed what he said next: “It was unfriendly of me.”

You’re not unfriendly.

There was something really quite certain, Bilbo mused, and soothing about Bifur’s signing; throughout their entire conversation, his speech had been both authoritative and direct, as if nothing could cause Bifur to doubt himself. Bilbo wondered, with no little jealousy, if this was an artifact of Bifur’s own personality, coming through in his gestures, or if it was a side effect of Iglishmek and dwarven culture at large, which seemed to value bluntness and clarity above all else.

It was a wondrous concept, to Bilbo: that a language itself might shape — and be shaped by — its speakers, through only the exchange and translation of it. He had only ever had hobbitish Common available to him; he wanted to sink now into Iglishmek and all its potentiality like sinking into a hot bath.

Bilbo cleared his throat. He admitted, with a touch of shame, “I want to talk with you about Iglishmek more than I want to talk about the Forgetting.”

Bifur gave a creaking sort of chuckle.

Yes, he said, that sounds like you. You’re a poet. You enjoy words. We can talk about Iglishmek.

Here, though, he directed a stern look at Bilbo: it carried a touch of playfulness, but there was a great deal of steel to it, too.

But we will also talk about the loss of memories, as your troublesome-head heals. Bifur signed. Yes?

Bilbo bunched up his mouth.

Yes, he agreed, but he let his hands put in a little reluctance into the gesture for good measure. Yes.

--

“Knock, knock!”

Bilbo opened his eyes and sighed. It could not have been twenty minutes, all in all, since he had finished his morning conversation with Yinka, and he did not care to be visited again so soon.

It was not that Yinka was unpleasant to talk to! She certainly had a better bedside manner than most hobbitish healers and physicians — who all seemed to be either very crotchety or very condescending, with not one plain-spoken, sound-headed soul to be found in the whole bunch.

For that reason among many, Yinka suited Bilbo very well, and he supposed he had the Bilbo-that-was to thank for gaining her friendship. He benefited from it every day, when Yinka was able to glean the state of his mind and body almost immediately upon his awakening, which meant the discussion could then turn towards more pleasant and interesting things. Bilbo was most pleased of all to hear about her life in Dale, which sounded extraordinarily sophisticated: filled as it was with Yinka’s various friends, and the many medical mysteries she encountered, and her new interest in foreign travelers and trade goods coming in from the South as summer progressed.

Yinka said that if he thought her life sounded glamorous, he should try being Consort of Erebor.

Bilbo replied that it was a bit early to be forcing him out of his sickbed to get a job, didn’t she think?

So, Yinka was skilled at chitchat; everyone else from the Company was, too, really! That did not, Bilbo was sorry to say, make the constant stream of visitors from dawn til dusk much less of a burden to him.

Because: it turned out that the injury had foisted upon Bilbo a terrible fatigue. It draped on top of him like the warmest and heaviest of blankets, and was twice as likely to encourage unconsciousness. At the very least, though, if he could not have sleep, he wanted silence and the chance to close his eyes for a bit. Which was impossible, when one had callers.

Bilbo remembered having a great deal more time in Bag End to just sit alone and think.

…Maybe too much time to think back then, yes, he could admit that much to himself now. But, well, the next thing he knew, he’d been out on the road with dwarves — and honestly, that was just more of the same old thing: nattering to himself in his own head, since no one cared to speak with him out in the real world!

Plenty of time on the quest to ride upon a pony and think, instead of sit still and think. Now he wanted more time to lie down and think.

All the same, Bilbo propped himself upright, this morning, to get a good look at his visitors — and was unexpectedly struck with the wonderful sensation that he had seen this very sight before!

“Fili–” said Fili.

“–and Kili!” said Kili.

They did not bow this time, since they were both crowded together over his threshold like two squirrels trying to steal from a single birdfeeder. But the sight of their beaming smiles felt even more gratifying to Bilbo than any mannerly bow ever could, as they chorused:

“At your service!”

“Oh!” Bilbo exclaimed. He reached over to bring his backrest to attention. “Hello, boys!”

He felt the smile on his own face growing as his irritation at being disrupted faded away. Fili and Kili’s energy really was infectious, and it had been almost three weeks since he could remember seeing them!

“Are we all right to come in, Mr. Boggins?” Kili asked, his face all innocence.

Fili looked just the same, though his expression turned more mischievous over the course of his own question: “You’re not still angry with us about your dishes and things, are you?”

For a moment, Bilbo was lost in a familiar wave of exasperated affection, of the sort that he had been starting to feel more and more when interacting with the boys on the quest. They could be sweet, but he also recalled their many pranks and jibes. They really were like the squirrels he was used to shooing away from his birdseed, only for them to return again and again to make trouble over what was none of their business.

It was an apt comparison, and what’s more, it was quite a pleasure, to have the sensation of correctly remembering so much: the squirrels scampering off the feeder, the sight of his mother’s prized dishes whizzing through the air, and this feeling, now, of begrudging fondness towards Fili and Kili.

“No, I know Bofur was the ring leader on that.” Bilbo reconsidered the memory of his blunted knives for a moment. “Mostly.”

Hearing this, Fili and Kili looked so alike as to be nearly one creature, crammed into the doorway, wearing their identical, pleased expressions.

“We’ll be on our best behavior, then, just to be safe,” Fili assured.

A strident voice carried from behind the boys’ backs: “And is it your best behavior, to make your mother wait out in the hall?”

Both the boys jumped and stumbled over each other. But then they huffed and rolled their eyes as if to pretend they hadn’t been startled at all, stepping inside the sickroom to let the speaker in.

The dwarf who entered the room was by far the shortest that Bilbo had met so far: probably two inches shorter even than Bilbo himself. But she emanated a grand presence nevertheless, for she was broad, and steady on her feet, and she glittered in her blue dress and array of jewelry, all in silver and diamonds. It did not hurt, either, that — aside from her height — she was almost the spitting image of Thorin Oakenshield, with the same unadorned beard and cascade of long, dark hair, though hers was covered over in a net of delicate, shimmering chains.

This was surely Dis, daughter of Frédris, of the House of the Longbeards.

“This is our mum,” Fili said — affirming Bilbo’s supposition and speaking very informally, indeed, of a dwarf lady whom Bilbo recalled suddenly was a Princess of the line of Durin, just as her sons were Princes and her brother was King! “Her name is Dis, and don’t let her scare you. You’re already the best of friends.”

Dis approached Bilbo’s bed at a confident clip and held out a hand to shake, which Bilbo did before he could think too hard about it.

“I don’t trust my sons to have told you good things, not at least that you can remember,” she told him wryly, and in that, she was correct. Bilbo had indeed heard much from Fili and Kili about their mother, and it was mostly about the force of her scolding when they failed to live up to her ‘impossible expectations, Mr. Boggins, seriously, you wouldn’t believe it if you heard her.’

Bilbo had dismissed this as the usual sort of grumbling you got from upbraided youngsters. Back at Bag End, he had racked up entire months of accumulated time listening to tiresome, unavoidable gossip, and some of this gossip had included tales of such rambunctious faunts as would make your feet go bald: wine cellars raided, livestock set loose — the boundaries of mushrooming turf utterly disrespected!

Fili and Kili’s antics, even just on the road, would give any one of those stories a run for its money. Their pranks were nothing terrible or terrifying, but Fili and Kili had certainly dropped Bilbo’s jaw a time or two. And so, likewise, he knew any mother of theirs would need a will and spine strong as steel.

“But from the friendship we two have shared, I already know that you’re wise enough not to have put much stock in what they said,” Dis continued, and so she was right again! Over the sound of her sons’ indignant squawking, she remarked, “I reckon I can still make a good first impression.”

Bilbo’s mouth flapped a little. He worried faintly to himself that he was the one who should be worried about making a good first impression, but then he remembered queasily that she already knew him, and– Well. “Of that I have no doubt, madam. My Lady.”

Goodness. It was one thing to suppose Dis fearsome-yet-fair while dealing with her sons, and another entirely to suppose her ferocity would feel just as fair when it was directed at him!

While Bilbo was busy hoping he would do nothing to invite Dis’ judgment this morning, Kili settled himself into the visitor’s chair, and Fili hustled over to join his mother to stand at Bilbo’s right side.

Balin’s earlier description of the lads’ new appearances was proving accurate: before sitting down, Kili had indeed been using two elbow crutches of gleaming, etched silver, and Fili had a well-fitted patch over his left eye. Bilbo also noted that while Kili was dressed almost exactly the same as Bilbo remembered him — brown leathers, worn down to easy softness — Fili styled himself quite differently these days, and in an extremely dashing fashion, at that!

For he wore an elegant doublet of strong, basil green, with matching trousers tucked into tall fawn-colored boots, which were themselves a perfect match for the suede cape worn rakishly over one of his shoulders. His neat golden hair and moustache gleamed as if lit from within, and all in all, he looked exactly like one of the dastardly, romantic highway robbers who played a role in many a thrilling Shire tale (never mind that there had been no tell of highway robbery in the Shire that didn’t involve tweenage dares in well over three-hundred years).

Bilbo was terribly jealous — it really was exquisite clothing! — but he could hardly begrudge Fili for pulling off the look. He was just the sort of fellow who could.

“Well! This must be the strangest thing in the world for you!” Kili said to Bilbo cheerfully, after he’d situated his crutches against the arm of his chair. “So, what exactly do you recall? And what’s it like: is everything sort of a drunken haze, or does it hurt if you try and remember, or–?”

“Mahal, Kili,” Fili swore in disbelief, saving Bilbo from having to answer. “What, are those the least intrusive questions you could come up with? It’s our first visit.”

“Aye, maybe, but I’m still right to ask. We’ve got to have a plan of attack for how to fill him in. You have a lot to catch up on,” Kili said, turning back to Bilbo. And then — why, he gave off a familiar, hobbitish sort of whistle!  A looping sort of sound of astonishment, that Bilbo himself made on occasion: hoo-wee! “I can’t imagine what I’d feel like if it’d happened to me. Out on the road one minute and stuck in here, the next. No memory of how it happened! I hope you’re not going stir-crazy, on top of it all.”

“We’ve actually heard that you have settled in shockingly well, all things considered.” Dis said, with a reproachful look at Kili.

“Oh, yes. Bilbo, everyone’s favorite patient,” Kili agreed meekly.

“All the healers and physicians are still fuming that Oin and Yinka have reserved the right to handle your care,” Dis told Bilbo in a conspiratorial tone.

She seemed to notice something she did not like about the way his blanket was situated over his legs, and leaned down to fix it as she kept speaking.

“It would be a honor, to tend to any Consort, but the Burglar-Lord of Erebor? And that’s not even to mention all the well-wishers and stickybeaks outside the infirmary, hoping to get an eye in on what it is you’re healing from. It’s only going to get worse when they hear what a strange affliction it is. I hope Balin and Ori settle soon on what yarn they hope to spin about it, for we won’t be able to bar the doors any harder, I can tell you that!”

By this point, she had brought herself back upright and, just as Bifur had done, she clasped her hand upon Bilbo’s shin for a moment in a gesture of firm comfort.

“The rumors about your fall in Dale are everywhere,” Fili said with a regretful sort of look. “You always used to say we were worse than hobbits about gossip; I don’t know if you remember that, about us dwarrow.”

Bilbo did remember, actually. Only a few days before the point at which his memory dropped off — back on the road to Erebor and just before the Weather Hills — he had been telling Bofur about Bag End. Bilbo had said that yes, truly: “that big old house,” as Bofur’d called it, really was, all of it, just for him: both his parents being dead, and him having no siblings, and no prospect for romance at his time of life, to be sure!

It had not been fifteen minutes past this conversation that all of the Company began acting oddly towards him; not fifteen minutes, and they were all, to a one — Thorin included, even! — glancing at him with sad, sorry eyes and speaking to him in low, soothing tones. It had sent Bilbo straight back, in queasy double-vision, to the receiving line at each of his parent's funerals.

The Company’s pity had worn off soon enough; Bilbo guessed that dwarves lived hard lives, and Bilbo’s misfortune was nothing novel. But it had indeed been shocking, that news of his loss could spread so fast! He had not even heard Bofur say anything aloud! It must have been Iglishmek, he realized in retrospect. Back then, he had thought it magic, or evidence of whatever social contamination seemed now to plague him, ever since he’d started living alone.

Fili was still speaking: “We should probably get you out there, soon as you’re able, to settle everyone’s nerves.”

“It’s been like wrestling wargs, trying to convince people you’re not dead!” Kili added.

“We can’t have you lying about in bed all day.” Dis smiled down at him. “There’s work to be done!”

And here she waited, like she was telling a joke in a pub and it was Bilbo’s turn to fill in whatever punchline that would send the whole table laughing. He opened his mouth and felt his lips do nothing but twitch.

He was not a fool; he could tell their conversation held only cheekiness, and no true blame for the slow pace of his recovery. But all the same, most jokes only worked when there was a frisson of truth to them. Bilbo’s injury was causing trouble for Dis... and Fili, and Kili, and Balin, and Ori, and Thorin, and really, the entire Mountain. And Bilbo could guess that, even if they did not blame him for what little progress he had made, Thorin’s family might still feel disappointed. In the weeks that had passed since his waking, Bilbo had not remembered one single memory, and he was sure the entire Company was talking about it.

He realized, like a shove from icy hands, that soon enough all of Erebor would be talking about it, too — regardless of whatever metaphor Balin and Ori tried to weave out of his seven missing years.

In the end, all he could think to do was turn to Dis and affect an optimistic, light-hearted tone that he hoped would appease her.

“I don’t know much about how Forgettings work, I’m afraid. Not formally.” He smiled to give his speech more warmth. “But I do know there’s no direct pathway towards retrieving my memories. And while I grant it’s taking me a while to recover, I’m in such luxury here, I confess that I hardly feel the delay. I just hope the Mountain really can spare me some time for rest. Last I can remember, after all, I was on the road for a dozen hours every day! It means a great deal to be allowed some laziness.”

Dis’ expression had gone a tad pickled, listening to Bilbo; it left her looking a curdled mixture of charmed and startled. But after a moment of silence, she burst into laughter.

“Maker’s might, it’s been a while since you used that politic tone on me!” she guffawed. “Oh, Bilbo. But it’s true enough that you work too much; I can well believe that your body feels it hasn’t rested a day since you reclaimed the Mountain. I suppose it’s good for you to still your busy brain for once and take a break.”

Bilbo sighed to himself at the thought that all this fuss and visitation would constitute a break for the Bilbo-that-was. But he supposed he had just suggested that very thing himself, and so he couldn’t blame Dis for agreeing with him.

Kili added, “You must be feeling pretty rested up, though, at this point. Thorin finally said you were well enough to handle a visit from us, so here we are!”

Thorin! Bilbo swallowed roughly, instinctively. His husband! He could not help but recall Thorin’s devastated expression and red-rimmed eyes, when last the King was in this room.

…But how would Thorin know, anyway, what-all Bilbo was or was not rested enough to do? He had not been back to ask. He must be conferring with Oin and Yinka, then. With everyone else but Bilbo, maybe.

“Now, let’s see the battle scar,” Fili said to change the subject, while Bilbo was still sorting out the thrill of pleased, disgruntled, confused surprise that had zipped through him at the mention of Thorin’s name.

“Oh, yes, can we, Bilbo?” Kili agreed, leaning forward. When Bilbo stumbled over a way to decline, he kept begging, “Come on, just a peek!”

Bilbo’s mouth had corkscrewed into skepticism, but when Fili and Kili’s voices began to tumble over themselves in pleas, he said, “Yes, yes, all right! Goodness.”

He lowered his chin and unwound the gauze that held a square of cotton batting over his healing temple, just as Oin or Yinka did sometimes, to let the wound breathe. Once the little shaved patch of his scalp was exposed to open air, he tilted his head this way and that, so both Fili and Kili could get a look at the stitches from their respective sides of the bed.

When they caught sight of the scar, both of the boys howled and gasped in glee — the universal sound of youthful, masculine pride — while Dis clapped her hands and laughed.

“Now that’s gorgeous,” Kili crowed in delight. “You look well tough!”

“Aye, Bilbo, it’s a total beauty!” Fili agreed. “Much better than that silly little bruise you got on your chest, up on Ravenhill.”

Bilbo raised his head and squinted. “Excuse me?” Ravenhill?

Kili was already nodding in accord. “Yeah, that blow didn’t even break the skin. Which is good, and thank the Maker Thorin gave you that mithril, but you had nothing lasting to show for all your heroics! Wasn’t fair.”

“What hap–”

“This is much better,” Fili said. He reached out a hand as if to touch the wound, but visibly thought the better of it. “Shame your hair is going to cover it, but when people ask to see–”

“What!” cried Bilbo.

“–I guess you can just push it aside, like you did with your shirt last time. Not much problem there–”

Bilbo choked at the thought of lifting his shirt to expose his unclothed chest to anyone. In public!

“It could be worse!” Kili cut in with consolation. “Dori’s got the best scar, but it’s right under his arse, so hard to show off–”

“Are people going to ask to see it?” Bilbo asked loudly, determined to get an answer.

“Absolutely not,” said Dis. “The Court knows you would never allow such an impertinence.”

Kili scrunched up his face with a little considering tilt of his head. “Dain will, when he comes to visit.”

“Who–?”

“And Dain will get a slap for it,” Dis countered, completely unimpressed. “From Thorin and I both.”

Bilbo gave up on asking for clarification. He supposed he would learn who Dain was if and when he arrived.

The conversation dashed forward, after this, and Bilbo tried turning his face this way and that, to better follow his visitors’ speech. But really, it only grew more and more difficult to attend to what was being said.

It was clear that Dis and Fili and Kili all shared a hereditary strain of forceful, boisterous personality; each of them seemed to want to lead the conversation, but not a one of them won out against the others, and so their voices cut and tumbled over each other like they were singing a rowdy round. It was astounding how their speech could seem so discordant and so synchronized, all at the same time.

Ah, well. Bilbo had seen examples enough of this sort of charisma in the Shire to know it was best to absorb the blunt force of such conversation, rather than try and struggle against it. The working of his neck back and forth was making his head hurt, anyway. He restricted himself to studying their faces, one at a time — watching the movement of their mouths, though he did not bother to concentrate on the exact words falling from their lips. The logic of the conversation was soon lost in between waves of their laughter.

Instead, Bilbo’s mind kept stumbling over the reality that this was his family, now. These were his nephews, these boys he had already known on the quest. This was his sister-in-law, their mother.

A sister-in-law! Imagine that!

Bilbo had never thought he would have a sister-in-law — nor any new family members, really, since he was neither on the marriage market nor much of a family man, at this point. His vast network of aunts, uncles, and cousins seemed less like family and more like a distant cloud of midges, who descended only when the weather was right and Bilbo made himself an easy target for their pestering. Truly, he was quite comfortably alone.

But now he had a sister-in-law, and two nephews besides. Remarkable.

Dis really did look very much like Thorin, Bilbo thought: from hair to brow to nose. But her eyes were a deep and canny black, whereas Thorin’s were, of course, a magnetic blue. Dis’ eyes changed the entire nature of her facial features — those features which she shared near completely with Thorin — but they were no less adept at capturing Bilbo’s attention, when she kept looking his way. She was attempting, Bilbo guessed, to include him, to draw him into the conversation; it reminded him, of course, of his mother’s affectionate, dancing eyes during past teatimes.

But rather than feeling embraced and bolstered by her gaze, he found himself overwhelmed by the strength of it. Dis seemed to see right through Bilbo, all the way down to that mortifying part deep inside him, that previously broken component of his clockwork, that had whirred to life when he had seen Thorin for the first time. It was as if she could witness that bit of him that had looked at Thorin, striding about the foyer of Bag End, and had lit up with the thought, Oh, so this is what it’s like. This is how it’s meant to feel.

No, Bilbo had never thought he would have a sister-in-law, because he had never wanted to marry. And then when his interest had ignited at that first sight of Thorin, it was simply the last nail in the coffin. If Thorin Oakenshield was the sort of person who truly stirred Bilbo’s stew after so many silly tweenage dalliances, it was clear Bilbo would never get the chance to vow with anyone — bad luck being known to follow bad taste, and all.

But here Dis was, all the same: one piece of evidence among many proving that Bilbo had vowed, and with Thorin himself, of all people! Dis looked at Bilbo as if she knew him, because she did. They were family. Thorin was his husband. She knew Bilbo was attracted to Thorin, a fact that would have sent Bilbo screaming back to the Shire if it had come out during the quest — but it shouldn’t feel embarrassing, now, because he and Thorin were married. Evidently the attraction was returned. Somehow.

“I think we’re tiring you out, Bilbo.”

Bilbo blinked. He refocused his attention on Dis, who was the one who had said this; her eyes were kindly, but her expression had slid towards the ironical.

“Usually you have us corralled by now,” she continued, “into speaking neatly, one at a time, on a single subject. You’ve let us go quite wild today.”

Bilbo blushed.

He hadn’t realized he was meant to be controlling the conversation– but it was true that they had come to visit him. Even though he was a guest in their kingdom, he was their host in this room, and so that meant it was his responsibility to manage their visit. And if all three of these dwarves had such evenly matched personalities, it only made sense that he should play arbiter between them.

Oh, but what did they expect? He’d never been a very good host! His mind had wandered endlessly in the Shire when he was accepting callers. At least today he could blame it on his head wound.

“I suppose I’m not back to my best yet,” Bilbo acknowledged. “I am sorry for it. Not that I think the injury addled me! Not permanently, anyway, I don’t think. I don’t know, yet, but I don’t think so. I hope not.”

He cleared his throat in an attempt to exorcise his embarrassment. He really could use a break. They were dizzying, Dis and Kili and Fili. They were his family, now, and they were dizzying.

“No, Bilbo, we said we’d be on our best behavior,” said Fili, “and instead we fell into all our old bad habits. We’ll come back soon to try again, shall we?”

“Tomorrow?” Kili said, audibly hopeful.

“Not me, I’m afraid,” Dis said, rubbing her hands together. “I’ve got that wire-drawers’ dispute to mediate! They’re not pleased the meeting is with me now, rather than you,” she said to Bilbo, again in that forward, conspiratorial tone. She sounded gleeful at the prospect of making this meeting more troublesome than Bilbo would have done. “And then I’m scheduled with Balin, and Sognir after that. Then we christen that forge in the Lower Galleries, and last it’s the Broadbeam wedding for the evening.”

“Poor Mum,” Kili said, not sounding sympathetic at all.

“Hush,” she replied. “It was wonderful to see you, Bilbo. You look very well, and it was good of you to put up with us today. Back soon.”

She leaned down and gave Bilbo a peck on the cheek; he could feel his blush grow hotter, at the sensation of her beard brushing against his face. She really did look awfully like Thorin.

“Tomorrow, Bilbo,” Kili promised, patting a hand twice upon the bed before levering himself upright to position his crutches. On Bilbo’s other side, Fili gave his shoulder a warm, light squeeze, and then all three of them were out the door.

When Bombur came to call half an hour later, Bilbo feigned sleep very, very aggressively. It was the first time he had allowed himself to do so in Erebor, to get out of a visit from his friends, and he felt prickled by guilt the entire time his eyes were closed.

--

At first, Bilbo thought that Dis might be the exception to a reassuring sort of rule: that it would be easier to contend with people to whom he could no longer remember being introduced.

This held true for Bilbo’s first meeting with Gimli, Gloin’s son, who was not very intimidating at all. The lad — visibly younger than Fili and Kili, with a red beard just starting to grow in evenly — came to call at the infirmary two days after Bilbo’s nephews and sister-in-law had.

He was shepherded in by his uncle, but even before the hobbit caught sight of Oin, Bilbo was squinting and asking, “Gimli? Is that Gimli?”

The boy looked shocked and then completely overjoyed. He stopped short in the doorway, at which point Bilbo saw Oin bump into his nephew’s back. The physician grumbled loudly about it before turning around and leaving Gimli to his visit.

“Aye, your Majesty!” Gimli exclaimed. “It is! You remember me!”

At that, Bilbo had to laugh, though it petered off into something rueful. “I’m sorry to say that I do not, no. You just look very like your father and– Well. I’ve seen the locket, of course.”

(Gloin’s famous locket contained images of his beloved wife and son, and on the road, it had been much gazed-upon by Gloin and — less willingly — by all other members of the Company.)

The speed at which Gimli’s expression collapsed from a beaming smile to a thunderous frown was quick enough to be comic.

“Ach, blast that locket!” And here he growled, though he was still too puppyish in stature for it to be very threatening. “How I wish you had forgotten it! And would that everyone else forgot it, too. My da still complains of its loss so regularly, I fear he will go down to the Wood himself one of these days to get it back.”

This statement, of course, necessitated an explanation as to how Gloin’s locket had come to be lost in the first place — had come to be stolen, in fact!

And that explanation, in turn, demanded an introduction to the great realm of Mirkwood that closely neighbored the Mountain–

Which could only be followed by a crash course in the community of elves who made of that place their home–

As well as a lengthy disquisition into the long-standing enmity between the Woodland elves and the Ereborean dwarves, an enmity which was–

“–not quite resolved,” Gimli acknowledged, with surprising delicacy.

The whole situation seemed an awful mess, but at least Gimli made for an engaging storyteller, with a keen eye for all the subtleties of the relationships he described!

And this made sense, too, for Bilbo learned over the course of the conversation that Gimli was Balin’s apprentice. Bilbo had gleaned by now that Balin was an expert in statecraft and politics, and so Gimli must getting a great deal of experience in both formal and informal diplomacy. The lad spoke of the elves, therefore, without much reproach, and indeed, with an air of genuine interest.

This made for a promising contrast to the typical dwarven distaste for elves that Bilbo recalled from the road towards Erebor. He had mentioned the fair folk a few times when taking his first, halting steps into conversation with the Company. Bilbo’s mother had met elves, after all, in her travels, and so her stories were foundational to his concept of what sort of people one might expect to encounter on an adventure.

But he soon learned that dwarves did not like to hear about elves, at all, and they found being likened to elves in any way even worse. Bilbo hadn’t been sure why, but the material fact of the dislike was inescapable. After the fourth time a dwarf had spit upon hearing any mention of elvenkind, Bilbo finally realized that they were not spitting at him, nor intending to be rude — they were instead only scorning the elves in an almost superstitious manner.

After hearing Gimli’s explanation, this reaction made more sense. Gimli told him that the most recent rupture with the elves, last in a long line of insults, was the way in which Mirkwood had abandoned Erebor at a time of great need, after it had been attacked by the very dragon from which Bilbo had been hired to burgle!

And even after this refusal of military aid, the elves had not even offered the dwarves food or shelter, preferring to watch the refugees scrabble and starve rather than do anything that might encourage their lingering in the North, on the outskirts of the Wood and near their freshly-stolen home. The elves had wanted the dwarves to move on as soon as possible, darkening Mirkwood’s doorstep no further.

Bilbo wondered why the dwarves had not explained this to him back on the quest, but he supposed it was an intimacy he had not earned, at the time. He wondered if the Company would approve of Gimli telling him now, for Bilbo had not done anything to prove himself worthy of the knowledge this time around.

It was just like being told the name Khuzdul by Bifur: it was very pleasant to have the chance to learn such a thing, but the only reason he was being taught at all was because he’d Forgotten. In the process, he’d gone back to being the same old fellow who hadn’t previously deserved to know.

“But relations are repairing!” Gimli insisted, when his explanation of the elven and dwarven feud was finished. “We have you to thank for that. You are very good with elves, your Majesty. Very, very good. You know precisely what to say, and exactly the tone of voice in which to say it, so as best to invite their confidence and ease their great mistrust.”

This revealed, to Bilbo, that while Gimli was civil enough regarding the elves, he still had a ways to go if he was yet speaking of them as if they were wild horses in need of taming, and not intelligent (and immortal!) beings.

…But, to be fair, Bilbo could not imagine even meeting such a creature, let alone ‘inviting their confidence’ or ‘easing their mistrust.’ He had indeed managed something similar, gradually, with his pony Myrtle before they got to Bree. But it was absurd to think he might carry off such an effect with a King of Elves and his entire court, similarity to horses or no.

And yet the handling of Mirkwood had clearly fallen to Bilbo. Bilbo, the Consort of Erebor.

This diplomacy with the elves — in addition to all of his other responsibilities, both foreign and domestic — apparently necessitated having an apprentice of his own, just as Balin had in Gimli. Bilbo had absolutely gaped at Gimli when he mentioned this young ‘dwarrowdam’ (a dwarf lass named Verthandi, daughter of Thira)! And the poor boy had seemed flustered to have been the first person to bring her up to Bilbo.

Bilbo was not sure why this would be cause for embarrassment. Perhaps it was that the Company had forgotten about her, or not did realize Bilbo would be interested in meeting her, or were following a strict schedule for when they would reveal information to Bilbo about his life under the Mountain. Maybe they simply preferred to keep his company to themselves. His packed visitation schedule certainly suggested as much!

But by the Green Lady: his very own apprentice!

Bilbo found it difficult to picture himself retaining an employee in such a way. The farmers who rented the Baggins land were technically employed by him, yes, but he saw each of them but once a year. And it was true enough that he saw the Gamgee family more frequently... but when he had hired them on to act as his gardeners, he had given them almost unadulterated free rein over the grounds. Bilbo’s parents had just died, after all, and he’d found more and more things falling by the wayside, overwhelming him.

The gossip round Hobbiton had been agog over this, of course. No hobbit who wasn’t infirm enough to be bedbound would hire someone else to do their gardening for them!

But Bilbo had. And what’s more, he persisted even when he felt he’d gotten his feet back under him again. It had just seemed easier to let young Hamfast keep handling the garden, since he clearly loved it so, and Bilbo was not feeling much love for anything, at the time.

Anyway. The apprentice.

Bilbo thought that his re-introduction to Gimli had been a relatively easy task, and that it had gone rather well — for the lad seemed an ambitious sort, but very respectful and well-schooled in tact and politesse. In other words, dwarves like Balin and Gimli, with an eye toward diplomacy, seemed to have a faint air of hobbitishness about them, and so Bilbo suspected Verthandi, Thira’s daughter, might be cut from the same cloth.

From Gimli’s description, she seemed to act as a sort of personal attaché, one who learned statecraft through the process of observing and assisting Bilbo’s day-to-day work as Consort. If they worked together so closely, she could hardly be very difficult!

And so, with this in mind, Bilbo requested that this apprentice of his come to visit him. He sent Gimli out to find her with an invitation for the next morning, if she was free, or any of the next three days following, if she was not. He was not sure if she would come, in truth, as he was uncertain as to her other responsibilities and time commitments. She might be busy putting out the fires caused by his accident, right that minute!

But in the end, when Bilbo was patted awake the next morning, Yinka was at his bedside with a visitor to be introduced, once they had gotten through the usual doctorly observations as to his fitness and mettle. And so it was that Verthandi, daughter of Thira, came to visit Bilbo!

She appeared in almost all ways just as a dwarrowdam ought, Bilbo supposed, and nearly nothing about her vexed his Shire-born sensibilities. She was neatly attired in a sensible tunic and trousers, both in a lovely dove grey. There were no careless smudges of ink or oil upon her pale, coolly-brown skin, as Bilbo had sometimes seen on Kili’s face, though she wore a bit of fashionable kohl around her dark eyes, just as Bilbo had seen on Dis.

Even Verthandi’s confident bearing was calm enough to avoid exciting Bilbo’s anxiety. This was sometimes a problem between him and dwarves, that much he could admit. He had been known to bristle in the face of their assertiveness whilst on the road to Erebor. But no, Verthandi spoke to him with a soothing sort of warmth, and a subtle affection, both of which showed she knew him well.

With half an ear, Bilbo listened as she inquired after his health, and as she explained their work together in the Court and what she had accomplished in his absence, and as she expressed a hope that he was finding ways to keep himself occupied over the course of his long bedrest.

It was just as Bilbo had expected, really. She was as polite and pleasant as Gimli had been. Not overly familiar at all. Almost entirely unobjectionable.

But her hair!

Her hair — gathered round about her head in a thick coronet braid held fast by silver clasps, and braided together where it grew along the line of her sharp jaw — was all a bright, emerald green!

Green!

It was her own, self-grown hair, Bilbo believed, for it was not a fabric wrap like Yinka’s nor any other headdress besides; he could not discern any gap where false hair might sit atop her head. Indeed, Bilbo could spot a faint layer of sleek new growth, black as her untouched brows, showing through at the roots of her beard and mane both!

It must be dyed somehow, he thought. Her hair was dyed, and it was green.

Bilbo’s reverie was broken by the sound of sudden laughter.

“Bilbo!” his apprentice said, as if she had been repeating his name several times. “It’s permanent, I’m sorry to say. But don’t worry, it’ll fade soon.”

“Pardon?” he blurted on instinct, trying to cover up how he hadn’t really been paying attention.

In an arch little gesture, Verthandi dipped her chin and raised her eyebrows: Come now, Bilbo.

“My hair!” she said. “The color, it’s permanent.”

Oh!

Bilbo felt a flash of scalding embarrassment. He had been so concerned over what sort of person Verthandi might be — would she be ill-mannered? Too forward? Abrasive? — but now here he was, the one caught staring at her hair like some rude little fauntling!

But Verthandi was yet talking: “–know you don’t like it. You’re just like my grandmother about the whole thing, but she hates it because she’s traditional when it comes to hair, and you hate it because you think the bright colors are atrocious.”

She leaned affectionately on that word — atrocious — as if it were not one of the rudest things she could accuse Bilbo of saying.

His stomach positively shriveled in on itself, to think that he had implied any insult of the sort to Verthandi. And about something permanent, that she could neither change nor take back!

“Atrocious!” Bilbo echoed. “I beg your pardon, but I’m sure I don’t think anything of the sort! I would never– I would never–”

Verthandi laughed again. “Bilbo, you’ve already told me you don’t like it. Three weeks ago, and then every other time I’ve dyed my hair before that. It’s your favorite thing to tease me about. ‘Oh, Thandi, that purple belongs nowhere but on a petunia! Oh, Thandi, they could use you to light up a mine with that orange! Oh, Thandi, you said it was going to be green — must it be so green?’ But trust me, you really will like it when it fades. You always do.”

Bilbo — desperate to have his mind directed away from the horrible prospect that he had actually said such vile things, right to Verthandi’s face — pictured a more muted version of the shocking green. Such a pale mint color would, admittedly, be appealing.

“Yes, I imagine it will be quite lovely,” he said faintly. Like pea soup, he thought but did not voice aloud, since he could not imagine the comparison would be appealing to a dwarf. By his soles, what Bilbo wouldn’t give for some pea soup right now.

But he digressed!

“Verthandi, I should like to apologize with– with all my heart for what I may have said to you about your hair. I can’t imagine why I thought it would be appropriate — and I really don’t remember saying it! But that’s no excuse, no excuse at all. It’s appallingly rude. I am so sorry!”

“Rude!” Verthandi looked as if the thought had never occurred to her. “Not at all. It’s just honesty; everyone’s got a right to be honest. I actually really look forward to hearing the things you have to say, the first time you see a new color, and you definitely look forward to saying them. I think you must plan them up in advance. It’s a joke between us.” Her eyes twinkled. “But I’m waiting on the day where the color actually sends you speechless. There’s a really bright blue you can sometimes get from indigo; I’m already thinking of that for next time.”

Verthandi’s smile had gone puckish, full of moxie. Bilbo, meanwhile, was feeling as ill as he had upon waking with his head wound.

To learn that the new Bilbo was rude to his help — well, really, rude to his protégée! The young person he was meant to mentor! And on top of that, to have his apology for this rudeness so emphatically refused! The strain must have shown on his face, because Verthandi’s smile faded as they both endured the ensuing silence.

“Please don’t fire me,” she said abruptly, sounding uncertain for the first time since entering the room. “I didn’t mean to speak out of turn, Bilbo. I just forgot myself. This is how we usually talk, to each other. His Majesty and Master Balin did say that I should introduce myself and our work to you gradually today, and I suppose this is–” She hesitated. “Well, it’s definitely not been gradual.”

“Fire you!” Bilbo cried, not quite keeping up with the pace of the conversation. “My word, I certainly won’t fire you. Heavens, no. What I’m trying to understand is why you haven’t quit! Why on earth would you work for such a rude and– and– and high-handed employer? To make disparaging comments about a subordinate’s hair! It’s beyond the pale.”

“Because you are teaching me so much!” Verthandi said with a quickness, though she took a second to think it over further and added, “And you aren’t rude; the comments are hardly disparaging. But it’s mostly the opportunity to learn from you, it must be said. I’d put up with a lot, to work with the first Consort to have a truly successful relationship with civil society in half an age, but I really don’t have to, working for you. Put up with a lot. I’m lucky.”

Bilbo shook his head. “Try not to flatter, my dear; you’ll never like the sort of behavior it encourages, in the end.”

“No such thing as flattery, amongst dwarrow,” Verthandi countered. Her smile was coming back, so he’d probably managed to resolve her worry over being fired, at least. “You really are a good boss, but I know you’re prone to worry. Please don’t worry over your honesty. That’s the whole point of telling me your opinion, so that it’s out in the open and we can laugh about it and move on.”

Bilbo sniffed: still guilty, still unconvinced — but starting to feel a bit silly for it, in the face of Verthandi’s good humor.

“If it makes you feel better,” she continued, in a subtly coaxing tone, “you can look forward to me saying ‘I told you so’ when the color turns. Every time, you’re so surprised you end up liking it so much! You’re very clever, Bilbo; you’d think you would learn that you need to go through the bright color to get to the pastel at the end. But somehow you never have. Maybe this time.”

The conversation turned, then, towards the process of dyeing one’s hair; Bilbo really did need a refresher on how Verthandi’s naturally black hair could be brought to this bright green and then made to fade to a more delicate pastel, over time.

And so his apprentice told him all about how her hair must first be bleached and lightened with a special acidic mixture, before being painted all over with dye; then Verthandi would be sent to go sit in a special heated room — a sauna — for a couple of hours so that the warm, dry air could set the color.

(The process sounded a bit arduous to Bilbo, but he supposed it was really not so different from a long fitting session at the tailor’s.)

After that, it was just a matter of careful washing and the avoidance of sunlight, and the color would last for months, lightening bit by bit until the hair reverted back to a colorless sort of yellow that could be bleached and dyed afresh.

Bilbo sat there and listened, visualizing the process as best he could. He would never dream of doing such a thing to his own hair, of course, but he could see the appeal. He’d always liked bold, bright colors in clothing, flowers, and furniture.

And the process seemed of a piece with most things that originated beyond the Shire, out in the wide world: where folks were always having to go through difficult and dramatic circumstances to earn their just deserts. What was the quest for the Mountain, after all, besides one long struggle through something intense, and perhaps ugly — all to strive for the noble, glorious, joyful reward on the other side?

You weren’t meant to skip over the days and days of traveling — or the bright hair, or any of the pain, really — to try and enjoy the deserts right from the beginning. You were supposed to come to love the journey, in fact, and revel in how changed you were by your trials.

Bilbo was a hobbit from the Shire, and so of course he held no truck with any of that. But, well– he did not live in the Shire any longer.

Chapter Text

The dwarves were all being very conscientious about Bilbo’s injury and his recuperation, but truth be told: Bilbo found his patience with himself starting to strain. He just wished he knew what you were supposed to do, if you happened to be a hobbit who had had a Forgetting.

Such knowledge would have come in handy, because Oin and Yinka were always keen to include Bilbo in the planning of his own care. They turned to him time and again, so that he might contribute his firsthand expertise concerning hobbits and their health.

Bilbo did think this display of trust and deference was kind; certainly, it was well meant! It didn’t feel motivated by any urge to publish a monograph on his condition, as Bifur had seemed to suggest about all doctors’ interest, in any case, and technically, Bilbo did know more than they did, on the subject of hobbitish memory loss. He was a hobbit, after all, and they were not!

But all the same: to elevate his knowledge above Oin and Yinka’s was to be in the business of making distinctions without differences, which was only to say: if they knew nothing, he knew next to nothing. Some expert!

The most Bilbo had heard about any given Forgetting, before this, was about one that had occurred during his childhood, when a bachelor farmer from the area round Hobbiton had been struck on the head during a barn raising.

Bilbo couldn’t recall learning precisely how much time that particular farmer had lost, nor anything definitive about how drastically the farmer’s life had changed since the last stretch of time he could remember. Bilbo never even heard whether he ever got his memories back. But the outlook for his recovery had not sounded particularly dire to Bilbo’s young ears, when he stood outside the kitchen to eavesdrop on his parents’ gossip.

The farmer was unmarried, so there was no sudden appearance of spouse or children to be explained or accommodated. There was no discussion of any need to reintroduce the farmer to his friends, nor any worry about a sudden unfamiliarity with tilling and husbandry. The fellow didn’t seem to want to break the lease for his land, and he showed no interest in starting over in a new line of work.

The most daunting aspect of the recovery, as far as Bilbo could tell, would be convincing the farmer to rest long enough to heal his head. That, and catching him up on all the complicated Shire gossip he’d Forgotten.

Really, Bilbo’s parents had just sounded relieved that this had happened to one of the Chubbs’ tenants, and not to anyone on a Baggins farm. An injury like this would delay the harvest and make it harder for the farmer to prepare for the coming year; all of that could be avoided, of course, if the Chubbs hired on extra help for the fellow, but to do so without offending the farmer’s pride would be a very touchy endeavor. Bungo and Belladonna resolved simply to count themselves lucky, and to send the farmer a get-well hamper full of food.

(Bilbo wished that he could send himself a get-well hamper full of food. Three weeks into his recovery, and his meals were still abysmal!)

But really, when it came right down to it, Bilbo didn’t know what to do: neither how he should acclimate himself to his new life, nor how he might hasten or ensure the retrieval of his memories.

In his mind, he tried to retrace each step he had taken with the dwarves, all the way from Bag End to the Weather Hills — every uncomfortable night on the ground, every instance of scolding, every tentative gesture of friendship between himself and the Company. But this careful inventory did not stop his memory from going black and cold after the tale of Azanulbizar.

And so then he tried to strengthen his powers of association, using the same method with which he had once searched for rhymes when composing poetry. While he had used to ponder, “what rhymes with sage?” now he quizzed himself with: “where else have I seen this fine green marble? When might I have seen another dwarven jacket of a similar cut? On what other occasions could I have been served such tasteless soup?” But he could only think of hypothetical answers to these questions, and nothing that he remembered himself.

He even tried to clear his mind of all thought entirely: to sit silently, unoccupied, as if the lost memories might flit into his head like butterflies tricked into lighting upon a motionless palm. But this technique, especially, had him falling dead asleep before any recollection could appear.

And so he was having no luck at all, in undoing his Forgetting.

There was perhaps a protocol that had been developed for such situations. The Shire was full of protocols, a word which Belladonna Baggins had always pronounced with a dropped voice and an exaggeratedly posh accent. Bungo would blush and shake his head whenever his wife mocked Shire norms in such a manner — but Bilbo knew that his father was perfectly happy to shirk conventions whenever Belladonna asked with batted eyelashes.

So, no, the Bag End Bagginses had never much cared to drill Bilbo with Shire protocols! And they were gentlehobbits, after all. Well-to-do and comfortable. Thorin had been right when he’d pointed out that Bilbo was no farmer —

(Thorin had not been to see Bilbo now in more than two weeks.)

— which meant Bilbo wasn’t of the sort who would typically get hurt and Forget. No one in Bilbo’s social set would have known what to do, if they had experienced a loss of memory, and so he knew he should not blame himself for his ignorance.

But this did not change that he had no earthly idea of the way in which he should act, or what sort of recuperative exercise he should be doing, or when he should expect improvement, or how on earth he should avoid panicking at the thought that there might be nothing to be done to fix this, at all–

So. Bilbo felt the discomfort of uncertainty, and he felt it acutely.

--

But the dwarves! The dwarves were trying their hardest to help. As a matter of fact, they kept up their habit of hardly ever leaving him alone.

He ate first breakfast by himself, yes, but after that, he was occupied by callers nearly until he rolled over to go to sleep, only interrupted by snatched solitary moments with a bedpan or, later on in his recovery, when he teetered over the privy, to which he had been diligently walked by one of his visitors.

But that didn’t mean that these visits could not be put to good use!

In fact, Bilbo — quite bravely, he thought — asked the dwarves if they might begin to tell him the tale of their quest for Erebor, picking up where his memory left off. This was both to provide pleasant diversion for the Company (whose entertainment Bilbo could not imagine inventing all by himself) and to encourage his own recollection. If his own attempts to remember did not spark the reappearance of any new memories, then maybe an account of what-all from the journey he had Forgotten would do the trick.

The Company agreed, and set to their storytelling right away. Back when Bilbo had advised everyone that hobbits who Forgot should be re-introduced gradually into their new lives, the dwarves seemed to have taken “re-introduce gradually” to mean “make sure any explanation takes a long, long, long, long time.” And so they were detailing the quest in… excessive? agonizing? immersive detail.

Each member of the Company —

(excepting Thorin, who, again, had been absent. For many, many, many days.)

— took it in turns to unspool the protracted tale of their journey, relying on Bilbo himself to be a sort of bookmark, prompting each new storyteller as to where the last one had left off.

And admittedly, there was much to marvel over.

For one thing, Bilbo was impressed by his own quick thinking, especially with regard to the incident with the trolls, which was relayed by Fili and Kili. They were very sorry for getting him into the whole business, but Bilbo quickly forgave them, hearing how they had all gotten out of it easily enough. Not his best work, admittedly, for he had oiled himself out of sticky situations much more smoothly back in his misspent youth. But given the circumstances…

And for another thing, Bilbo was completely flabbergasted to learn that the trolls had collected a wondrous hoard, which was catalogued for him by Gloin — and Gimli, who had been charged by his father to go collect the rest of the treasures when journeying to Erebor with the rest of the Blue Mountain dwarves. It was admittedly great fun to watch the two of them argue over what had actually been found in the hoard, and what the other was only exaggerating.

And Bilbo was also deeply disturbed to learn from Dori that the ‘wargs’ he had heard previously mentioned were just bigger, uglier, wilier wolves. How horrible, to think they had not only crossed paths with such creatures, but had been chased by them all over hill and dale!

But what Bilbo found most wonderful of all was the account of the Company’s time in Rivendell, the home of the Westerly elves.

Bilbo’s mother had travelled to Rivendell alongside the wizard Gandalf, back in her adventurous youth, and she’d told stories of the trip to Bilbo in his childhood. It must be said, however, that her account had always sounded a bit improbable, much colored by Belladonna’s habitual dottiness and her un-hobbitish taste for the surreal. When she had talked about bridges soaring over waterfalls, and wooden archways delicate as spider webs, and great houses above ground that were all windows and no walls... well, Bungo and Bilbo would both sit spellbound, of course, but they would also share a private look between just the two of them:

There she goes again!

But over the course of three visitors — Nori first, then Dwalin, then Bombur — Bilbo was treated to a description of Rivendell that was not far off at all from what Belladonna had described.

In Nori’s two-hour visit (and in very precise, architectural terms), he recounted the look and feel of the valley. There were stone arch bridges linking one bank of the cascading, thundering river to the other; just as all the buildings were open to the elements, with sinuous, vaulted archways carved from wood stained in pale colors.

Nori’s exactitude about the way Rivendell was constructed and furnished sometimes went a bit over Bilbo’s head. For instance, Bilbo wouldn’t know granite from any other type of pebble or boulder. But it still helped him picture the place, to think of the ash-colored, unpolished rock that Nori described as forming all the stonework: making up the foundations of the buildings and the basins of the many fountains, sculpted into the load-bearing columns of the interiors, and laid out as flagstones upon the floors and pathways.

And while Bilbo didn’t understand Nori’s tangent on the tensile strength of various woods, he appreciated Nori’s description of the elves’ commitment to ‘inviting plants and the natural world to enter and mingle with the trappings of domestic space’ and ‘allowing the logic of nature to dictate the co-existence of symmetry and asymmetry.’

That sort of high-faluting talk did allow Bilbo, in the end, to picture the sturdy, white-washed oak of the ceiling beams and staircases, and the pale polished pine that made up the doorways and interlaced arches of the windows.

And it surely took Bilbo’s breath away, to hear tell of the vista that had presented the Company’s first view of the place: ‘a crescendo of architecture,’ as Nori called it, ‘a triumph of studied effortlessness’ made manifest in the crowd of perfectly-positioned buildings arising cloud-like from the mist of the waterfalls that fell at Rivendell’s feet.

“You’re being awfully complimentary about the look of this place,” commented Bilbo, a bit shocked.

“I have a good eye,” said Nori, dropping his formal tone, “and in fairness, they’re commendable craftspeople, the elves. They live for so long that it’d be a real embarrassment if they never managed to make anything worth admiring. We dwarrow live for 300 years at most, so don’t get me wrong: we make much better use of our time. But aye! Since they’re immortal, elves do manage to turn out some good work.”

Nori spent so much time belaboring the construction of Rivendell that it was up to Dwalin to describe what it was like for the Company to actually arrive. The elves had themselves just been returning from a hunting party, at the time, and so Dwalin’s account paid a great deal of attention to the elves’ weaponry, their riding formation as they returned on horseback, and what security measures they took when hosting the Company for a formal dinner.

There was not nearly as much focus devoted to the songs the elves sung in the valley —

(“Repetitive, kind of annoying,” said Dwalin. “‘O, tra-la-lally,’ ‘ha ha ha,’ that sort of thing. You just know they were poking fun at us.”)

— the music that was played at dinner —

(“That was all right, actually. Light, airy. They were playing harps. You should ask Thorin about that; he knows more than I do. Anyway, Bofur got us singing to liven the whole thing up a bit.”)

— the menu that was served —

(“Lettuce and roots? And not like how you make ‘em. No meat, either! But nice wine; good-looking table, I suppose. But it was no great meal, I’d say, overall.”)

— or the particular elves that the Company ended up meeting.

(“You’re good mates with that Elrond, now; he’s an important one, keeps all the records and books and things. Got a great library, or so I hear from you and Ori. And you’re always trading letters with him across the Misties. And then there was Limdir, Lindir, something like that... He was the one that found us rooms to stay in, and tried to shoo us around. What’d they look like? Well: gawky, pale. Dark hair, serious-looking. I don’t know. Sorry, Bilbo, it wasn’t top of my list to make eyes at ‘em!”)

And so, by his own admission, Dwalin was perhaps not the person best suited to relate this particular portion of the quest.

“You ought to ask my brother about it,” he said decisively. “I never had a head for any of that diplomatic rigamarole. He’d give you all the subtleties, though, that’s for sure.”

“Where is Balin?” Bilbo asked. “He hasn’t been by in a while.”

Indeed, Balin hadn’t been back to visit Bilbo — not since those first few days after the hobbit had asked the Company to start recounting the quest. Even when faced with an excess of other visitors, Bilbo found himself missing Balin a great deal.

“Ach, I’m sorry, Bilbo,” Dwalin said with a heaving sigh. “And he is, too. But he’s up to his ear-hairs in royal business.”

“Oh, yes, Ori did tell me they were both trying to manage the buzz around my accident.”

“Well, aye, but that’s just the start of it. You’ve been recovering — which is good! Fine!” Dwalin hastened to say. “But that means there’s a lot of slack to pick up, with the guilds and Dale and the Court and whatever else. Can’t be avoided.”

“He’s overworking himself,” Bilbo surmised, voice turning dismal.

“A bit,” Dwalin acknowledged. “But it’ll be all right. It’s just for now. He’s got Dis and Fili and Kili to help make the usual royal appearances, not to mention all the staffers and a few friendlies in Court.”

“And Thorin, of course.” Bilbo said. When Dwalin squinted — like he didn’t quite understand — Bilbo continued, “To make some of those royal appearances.”

Dwalin’s chin ducked down. “Ah, well. Thorin’s taking his own time away from the public.”

“Away from the public?” And then Bilbo realized, abruptly, that he as Consort could in no way be included in ‘the public.’ “He’s not busy, and he hasn’t come to see me?”

Thorin’s absence had been leaving an increasingly sour taste in Bilbo’s mouth for weeks, though he could not say for certain why. Intellectually, he could well understand that Thorin would need to be away from the Infirmary and out amongst his people, smoothing any feathers that might have been ruffled by Bilbo’s accident. And besides: Bilbo had long made a habit of putting distance between himself and Thorin on the road to Erebor. This had the double advantage of allowing Bilbo to gaze upon Thorin’s noble profile and excellent seat in the saddle as much as he liked, all while decreasing the likelihood that any misstep on Bilbo’s part would draw Thorin’s notice (and subsequent ire). So he was used to avoiding Thorin’s attention rather than craving it.

Balin’s company had always been heartening; it made sense for Bilbo to miss that! But Bilbo could not even remember his own wedding ceremony, and so he wondered at his growing uneasiness, as the weeks passed and still Thorin did not return. If he could actually recall the feeling of being Thorin’s husband — enjoying the full force of his love and respect, which was just as imaginary and aspirational to him, at the moment, as the fine elvish libraries Dwalin had mentioned — he could justify this feeling of disappointment, and vague offense, in the face of Thorin’s avoidance. But as it stood, there was no logical reason to feel Thorin’s absence all through Bilbo’s body, like the irksome aches of an escalating fever.

Oh, but he should probably stop worrying about the whole thing and just consider himself lucky there was one less guest to entertain.

Evidently, Dwalin felt the same way, since he replied with: “Bilbo, he just needs time.”

“Of course he does,” Bilbo allowed — and yet he could not resist adding, “But it sounds to me like he has all the time he could ask for, if he’s not out and about, King-ing and monarchizing and whatnot.”

“What I mean is, time to– to come to terms with it all, or however you want to say it.” Dwalin corrected himself. “He’s upset, and he doesn’t want you to see that.”

Bilbo blinked and pursed his lips. “Upset. About…” He tapped gently at the side of his head that was healing. Upset about how I lost my memories. About how I got myself into this mess.

Dwalin gave him an immensely skeptical look. “Aye. Is that shocking to you? He doesn’t want you to blame yourself for what happened, and he’s trying not to blame himself. Give him time. He’ll be all right.”

Bilbo felt a surge of dread at this mention of blame. He made himself chuckle. “He never was very good at dealing with frustration!”

But even as he spoke, he heard the pettiness in his own voice, the meanness. And he regretted it immediately. Still, before he could even begin to apologize, Dwalin’s hackles were raised.

“It’s not frustration he’s feeling. Fear and grief, aye, I warrant, but not frustration, and not with you, Bilbo. Now, I’m going to say something,” he warned gravely. His great eyebrows were raised as high as they would go. “And once I say it, you have to pretend I said it in the nicest, prettiest, most hobbitly way possible: the way that’ll make you take it to heart and not be hurt over how it was said. I don’t know what that way is, but I need you to know that’s how I mean it. You hear me?”

Startled, now, and more than a little intrigued, Bilbo could only nod.

“Thorin, these past weeks,” Dwalin said. “He’s knocked sideways. You two had a life together, and now you don’t remember it. You aren’t remembering it. He loves you, and it’s like none of that ever happened. I don’t even want to imagine how I’d feel, myself, but I can see it’s tearing him apart. He needs time on his own to be miserable and not take you along for the ride. So, no. He can’t see you right now.”

Bilbo’s first thought, after a long stretch of total silence within his mind, was: Don’t be shocked, now. You knew all this already. He’s the husband of the Bilbo-that-was, the Bilbo that’s gone. You can’t be shocked that he’s in grief.

But Bilbo was shocked, nevertheless.

The truth was, the other members of the Company mentioned Thorin only in passing, and they’d certainly said nothing about the relationship — the marriage! — that Bilbo and Thorin had shared. They weren’t avoiding the topic, Bilbo didn’t think: not, at least, in the hobbitish way of using many words to say nothing much, the language into which Bilbo had just been asked to translate Dwalin’s blunt honesty.

And so, Bilbo supposed, he had gone on assuming that this Thorin — to whom he was married now — was still the Thorin-that-was, the Thorin on the quest for Erebor. That Thorin hadn’t seemed to care much whether Bilbo lived or died, so long as he went about either option in the least annoying way possible.

But Thorin had changed over the course of years and years. Who wouldn’t? And so now — being faced with sudden and complete candor about Thorin’s devastation, the shared life that Thorin had lost — Bilbo didn’t know how the magnitude of all that change could be anything other than shocking.

And not only shocking: unimaginable! The idea of having a spouse who had Forgotten their own marriage was foreign and incomprehensible, rather like the many dwarven customs Bilbo had encountered just after they all left the Shire. Dwalin had said he himself wouldn’t like to imagine how it would feel, to lose someone to a Forgetting — but Bilbo realized that he could not conceive of it, either.

There were so few in the Shire who would have any opportunity to Forget him in the first place! It wouldn’t matter much at all if anyone lost their memory of him.

…If Hamfast Gamgee Forgot Bilbo, that would probably be a blow, since Bilbo saw him nearly every other day and relied upon him so deeply for the upkeep of Bag End. And his Baggins cousins, with their children Dora, Dudo, and Drogo, from the other side of Hobbiton — yes, if they Forgot him, that would be sad enough, since they were the members of his family he tended to see the most. And he’d not easily find again the likes of Heather Hornblower, with whom he corresponded occasionally, via post, about poetry! If she Forgot him, it would take ages to rebuild the trust needed to convince her to share her work and read his in return.

But Bilbo supposed he had lost each of those people anyway, since he now lived in Erebor, and they already seemed so far away, even without the memory of seven years of lived separation.

And while it was of course understandable, logical, that Thorin would feel badly to have lost progress with his husband, Bilbo could not really empathize. He did not remember ever having a husband at all, and the sad truth of it was that you couldn’t mourn what you’d never had.

But for a moment, he tried to wrap his head around it, and imagine it as best he could, and–

No. Nope.

Bilbo shut his eyes so tightly that light flashed behind his eyelids: like sparks, like stars. Imagining the immensity of such a grief was exactly like thinking of stars, in fact. When you looked up at them, sparkling in the void, you could not picture an end to the height and reach of the sky, which went on forever, and trying to do so would only fill you with franticness and fear until you simply put the whole thing aside and thought on it no longer.

“Now, remember, I said to make it sound all hobbitly and nice, in your head,” Dwalin growled. The sound of it jolted Bilbo out of his fugue. “Thorin’ll come back to see you soon enough. The whole point of me saying all this is to show how much he misses you, after all! Just give him some time. And I’ll tell him you’re wanting to see him again; he’ll like hearing that…”

Bombur was Bilbo’s next visitor that day, right after Dwalin, and so it was up to him to cover the remainder of their stay in Rivendell, as well as their quick exit from the valley, leaving Gandalf behind. Bilbo had been left so unnerved by Dwalin’s visit, however, that he never gained much clarity on why they’d had to leave so secretly and so rapidly. Mostly, he wished that Bombur would go away and leave him in peace to think.

…Of course, Bilbo was asleep almost before Bombur was out the door for the evening, and so he did not get much time to ponder and plumb the depths of Thorin’s loss. Not before Bofur was sticking his head over the threshold, calling again right after first breakfast the next morning.

Bilbo’s long night of exhaustion-fueled unconsciousness gave him the patience to sit through the next stretch of the quest for Erebor — and it must be said that Bofur was as good a storyteller that day as he was on any other, so Bilbo was at least entertained, even if his chest was still tight with anxiety.

This was also, of course, when Bilbo first heard tell of the great stone giants, who apparently liked to do their arguing with fists and thrown boulders, under cover of thunder and lightning. Bofur represented this for Bilbo using his whole body: taking off his coat so that he could better illustrate the giants’ lumbering lunges, and throwing his hat across the room as if it were one of their boulders.

“It was a sight!” he declared to Bilbo, once he’d settled down again in the visitor's chair. “Of course, we were all too terrified to find ‘em a marvel. You know, we were even standing on the knees of one, for a time! Anyway, the whole Company got separated for a stretch or two, when the falling rocks ruined the path, and– Well. You did almost take a tumble off the cliff-face, Mister Baggins.”

“Me!” Bilbo cried. But then: “Oh, what am I talking about? Of course it was me. I’m surprised I wasn’t killed.”

Bofur blinked and then he began to guffaw. “Mahal’s balls. That’s just about what Thorin said, at the time.”

Bilbo felt his mouth go pinched. “Oh? What did he say?”

Bofur opened his mouth and closed it; he’d heard, same as Bilbo, the tone of their conversation change.

“I shouldn’t go speaking out of turn. Thorin was the one that saved you,” he told Bilbo gently, “when you were dangling off the path. It wasn’t your fault that you went over, mind; could’ve happened to any one of us. Half the party had only just avoided becoming nothing more than a smear on the rockface!

“But anyway, there you were, having had the good luck and strength of arm to hang onto the path when you might’ve taken a terrible fall. And Thorin leapt down and grabbed you to haul you up — he almost fell himself, so he could hardly blame you for not managing a perfect climb! I’ll tell you, my heart was up in my mouth the whole time, to watch you two dangling over that drop.”

Bofur sighed. “Ach, but... a near miss like that can bring up all sorts of reactions in folks, and you know yourself that Thorin is prone to anger. He said it was clear you were in danger out on the road, and it might’ve been best if you’d never left your home.”

Bilbo’s throat was dry, but he snorted. “He didn’t say it like that,” he guessed.

Bofur managed a rueful chuckle. “Well, no! No, he didn’t. But it’s not for me to go sharing words that aren’t mine. I will say that you didn’t take it well. You sure gave me what-for, afterwards!”

“What did I say?” Bilbo asked. “I hope it wasn’t too awful, since I cannot imagine that any of what happened had been your fault!”

At Bofur’s hesitation, Bilbo pressed. “Bofur, I can’t remember what I said. You have my permission to tell me, if you recall the words.”

“I do,” Bofur said. His smile was sad. “I don’t think I’ll forget them as long as I live.”

Bilbo cleared his throat. “Well, then?”

Bofur shuffled a bit in his seat. “We’d gotten out of the downfall — of water and boulders both, mind. We’d bedded down for the night in a cave. But… you took up your pack, and you made to go.”

“What, back outside?”

“Back to Rivendell, aye. And I said, ‘no, you can’t leave! You’re one of the Company; you’re one of us!’”

Bilbo felt his face go skeptical, and Bofur huffed another laugh.

“Again, that’s the exact face you made, back then. You didn’t believe me for a second — which was a real shame, since you were and are one of us, Bilbo. Truly. But you said you were leaving — and I thought you were just homesick, but I was wrong, of course. More than that, you were hurt. You said you weren’t like us dwarrow, who couldn’t possibly wrap our heads round homesickness because we couldn’t wrap our heads round having a home. You said we only knew a life on the road, never settling in one place, never belonging anywhere.”

Bilbo sucked his teeth, awash in shame. “Unkind,” he said of his past words. “And untrue!” he added, waving a hand about the room, gesturing to the stone and carvings. Erebor.

Bofur said nothing for a moment. His face had gone strained.

“No, you were right, in your way,” he said quietly. “Of course you would feel like that, when we’d made you feel unwelcome, made you feel different and separate from us. And I was going to let you go. I wasn’t going to stop you, Bilbo, from leaving and heading back to your Shire. I’m sorry. That would have been a horrible mistake, and dead dangerous for you, besides. I’ve never apologized to you for it, but let me try now. I’m so sorry, Bilbo. I wanted you to stay, and I should have tried to keep you with us.”

Bilbo remembered considering the idea of turning back again and again, on the quest; he would never deny that he’d regretted following the dwarves more than five, ten, a hundred times. But:

“I left?” he asked, incredulous that he had really done it.

“Ah!” Bofur brightened a bit. “Now that’s the strange part!”

“Sorry, this — now, just this — is the only strange part?”

Bofur shot him a quelling look. “That’s when I chanced to look down at your blade and saw it all aglow.”

“Sting.” Bilbo carefully recalled the name of the sword from the troll hoard.

“Aye, your little magic potato-peeler. And we both — dumbstruck! — stared at it glowing, and then, not a minute later, the whole floor went out from under us! Just dropped straight open and sent us all free-falling! And down we went into the goblin deep, since of course, it was a goblin trap that we’d thought such a cozy and hospitable cave up there in the mountains. We fell down a dozen chutes or so, scrambling all over each other, til we wound up at the heart of their horrid old nest.

“Now,” Bofur said, visibly resurfacing once more from the tale. “Here’s where I can only speak to what I saw, since all us dwarrow, we were plucked up by them goblins and taken to their King. But you, my friend, you managed to sneak yourself away!”

Bilbo — who had been waiting with a somewhat appalled eagerness to hear of the goblin torment, in the same way he was always a little excited to hear about a truly gruesome Shire scandal, despite himself — now came up short.

“But– Where did I go?”

“No idea!” Bofur said, sounding thrilled at the prospect. “You never told us!”

Bilbo felt his stomach turn. “What, never?”

“Not once. We’ve asked you more than a few times, but you’ve kept us in suspense. We all have our pet theories, of course. Kili swears you went to go get Gandalf, somehow, since he turned up not long after you left, and Thorin thinks you just followed behind us the whole time, only in that vanishing sort of way you have. Balin thinks you found your own separate route out of the mountains since you weren’t about to fight all those goblins with us. And for my part, I always thought you had a plan of your own to get us free that you were keen to try, like with the trolls — and you’ve never shared it with us because you’re sore you didn’t get to use it!”

There was so much in Bofur’s answer to sort through — Gandalf returning? Tunnels? ‘Vanishing sort of way’? — that Bilbo simply gave up on the details.

“You don’t know where I was?” he chose to ask instead. “How long was I missing?”

Bofur hummed. “Well, we did escape both the goblins and their tunnels by the time you showed up again. Destroyed their whole city, too — at least, it felt like we did, once we were through it all! So it would have been hours, at that point.”

Hours!

Bilbo drew a hand through his hair; he had to gentle the gesture at the last minute, as he’d forgotten that he still needed to be careful of his stitches. But he was distracted. His stomach was roiling like the dickens, to think he had been missing for hours in the Misty Mountains.

“You really weren’t far behind us, though, Bilbo,” Bofur said, after a moment. He ducked his head to try and meet Bilbo’s eyes. “We were trying to find you, out on the mountainside afterwards, and it wasn’t five minutes of looking before we spotted you! Like as not, you really were sneaking behind us the whole time.”

But Bilbo had no special degree of skill in sneaking; he had noticed he was much quieter than the dwarves, yes, but he had never thought to use it to trick them, or to spy upon them! And anyway, it did not much matter what Bilbo had likely been doing in that lost time under the Misty Mountains. No, it felt more important and more harrowing to realize that because he had never told anyone, no one else knew.

So now Bilbo had no way to know, himself, what had happened to him.

“You just turned up, all dusty and shiny, like a lucky old penny! Right on the other side of the High Pass! It was perfect comedic timing, Bilbo, truly, and then you gave us the most stirring little speech–”

“I don’t want to hear about this,” Bilbo gasped.

Bofur’s smile slid off his face. “What-now?”

“I don’t–” Bilbo swallowed roughly, “want to hear any more about the quest. Sorry. Not right now. I just– No, sorry, I can’t.”

With an expression cracked open and honest with surprise, Bofur said, “All right. All right, Bilbo; no, that’s fine.”

Bilbo nodded with a tight movement of his chin, trying to keep his head clear and his stomach down.

“Uh,” Bofur said.

He drummed the flats of his hands upon his thighs. Bilbo watched the movement and then closed his eyes when it didn’t help settle the twisting feeling in his belly.

“You, um,” Bofur tried again. “You want to hear about the lunch I picked up near here, last time I came to visit you?”

Bilbo’s eyes flew open. Immediately, his stomach felt as settled and smooth as good butter.

“Bofur. Oh, my word. Yes. Please tell me about lunch.”

Bofur, true to his word, launched into a description of how he’d found someone selling a new variation of spicy Stiffbeard stew. That sort of thing was called a curry, apparently, and it was usually comprised of meat swimming in a heavily-flavored sauce (though some unscrupulous dwarrow were slipping vegetables in there, too, these days — which was admittedly still tasty enough, Bofur said, but really not on, if you thought about it…).

Almost immediately, though, Bilbo found he was having trouble focusing on the food — despite how deeply he missed a good meal and how much he longed to be distracted.

Bilbo simply did not know what frightened him more: the idea that goblins were real, and not creatures made up to scare faunts into doing their chores, or the idea that no one knew, now, what had happened in those hours under the Misties. Well, no. The missing hours were absolutely more upsetting.

Had he simply abandoned the Company? Had he done any fighting of his own? Had he been lost and afraid? Had he been alone? Would it be worse if he had not been alone?

He tried to imagine entering some deep, dark, unknowable place and coming out unchanged on the other side, revealing himself to his companions with nothing more sinister to show for it than a fine little oration and a knack for timeliness.

He felt his stomach going wonky again, and so he interrupted Bofur with a hurried, “And you had this in Dale?”

Bofur’s mouth flapped as he halted his running commentary. “Dale? Uh, no — not about to go to Dale for lunch, Bilbo. It’s from a little stand near the Customs House, probably not a ten-minute walk away.”

A ten-minute walk away!

He almost felt his ears perk up straight as a hare’s. This was exactly what Bilbo needed to hear!

All of his worry and guilt and disquiet over his lack of memory narrowed down into a pinpoint of absolute certainty that all he needed was a good bite to eat in him, right now, and he would do anything to get it.

“Ten minutes?” he asked.

“Aye.”

“From here?”

Bofur nodded. “It’s very convenient!”

“Bofur.” Bilbo would have grasped his friend’s hand, if he could have reached. “I need you to go and get me a serving right this minute.”

Bofur frowned. “What?”

“A serving of the curry! Go and get one for me right now!”

And yet Bofur did not move. And Bilbo felt his patience snap clean in two.

He slapped his hand down on the bed, drawing Bofur’s shocked gaze. “Bofur, I swear on my grandmother’s leg hair, if you don’t g–”

“Whoa!” Bofur cried. He held up his hands, fingers spread and tense. “Whoa, now, hold on a minute, just– hold on! Don’t you think you should work your way up to a meal like that?”

“What on earth do you mean, ‘work my way up’?”

“It’s a pretty rich curry!”

Rich curry?

Bilbo could feel his own chin and jaw moving all over the place, as he tried to puzzle out what on earth Bofur could possibly mean, and what Bilbo could say that would get himself a taste of the curry most quickly.

He settled on: “So — is it the cost? Is that the problem? Because I have money here, Bofur; I’m absolutely sure of it. If there’s one good thing about being royalty in Erebor, it has to be having enough money to buy a decent meal if there’s one to be had.”

Bilbo looked toward the bell at his bedside and continued, “I mean, even this has got to be solid silver! Do you want to take this? Anyone with half a brain would take it in exchange for a bowl of stew, no matter what kinds of strange spices from who-knows-where are in it!”

“Uh.” Bofur eyed the bell incredulously. “…No. I’ll spot you for it. No need to pay me back.”

“And do you think the stand will still be open, when you leave here? So you’ll have time to bring it back to me? Tonight, I mean? Or this afternoon, even?”

“…Aye, I reckon it’ll be open until after the House closes. Plenty of time.”

“Then I’d be so thankful,” Bilbo said. He wanted both to melt back into his pillows from relief and to get up and waltz around, so energized was he by the prospect of good food tonight. Tonight! Good food tonight! “So, so thankful.”

Bofur cracked a smile through the searching squint he was still leveling at Bilbo. “Craving curry, then, I take it?”

Bilbo moaned and covered his cheeks with his hands, walking his fingers up the sides of his face until he was massaging his temples.

“Frankly, I have no idea what ‘curry’ tastes like,” he told Bofur after a moment. “I don’t really understand what it is. But anything, anything at all, would be better than what I’ve had for the past month. Please understand: I don’t mean to be rude or ungracious — I really don’t! — but I’m desperate. The cookery for my stay here has been so awful, I can’t even tell you. The food is appalling. I’d been thinking that was how all dwarven food was! You don’t know how relieved I am to hear you might have something edible in this kingdom after all.”

Bilbo watched as Bofur’s mouth went all knitted-up and his eyebrows climbed up his forehead.

“No, you’ve come to enjoy our cooking pretty well,” Bofur said, carefully neutral.

Of course, that was the moment when Bilbo recalled it had been Bombur, Bofur’s brother, who was the cook on the quest for Erebor; Bombur was the one with whom Bilbo had worked, side-by-side, to make the most out of the Company’s limited supplies and Bilbo’s optimistic but unpredictable foraging efforts. It was poor form, indeed, to cast aspersions on dwarven cooking to Bofur in particular.

And Bilbo felt washed all over in cold dread as he recalled, too, Thorin’s stony aspect when Bilbo had nattered away with his gross generalizations: I thought that every dwarf was a blacksmith. And Bofur’s drawn face when he recalled Bilbo’s unkindness in the cave: You dwarves only know a life on the road, never settling in one place, never belonging anywhere.

There you go again, he now thought to himself, faintly. Always so thoughtless. This is why you avoid company, after all.

“I see I have made some uncharitable assumptions,” Bilbo said to Bofur now, trying to reassert some tact.

Bofur hummed. “Well, maybe. But it sounds like we’ve made assumptions, too. The only reason we’ve been feeding you this way is that we were worried over the state of your stomach.”

Bilbo blinked.

“You weren’t!” he cried in dismay. “Whatever for?”

“A head wound can unsettle the stomach of a dwarf for a long while,” Bofur said with a bit of shrug. “Make it hard to keep things down. And we generally fare better if we have only simple foods when we’re sick, so we’ve been giving you the purest, simplest foods the kitchens can offer.”

What an absurdity!

“Well, I’m very sorry for you all, by my soles,” said Bilbo. “But that’s just not the case with hobbits! Why, our stomachs are the first thing to recover! No, no, that’s not the case with us in the slightest!”

Bilbo was relieved to see Bofur’s smile turn genuine before his friend threw back his head and laughed.

“Then I’m sorry it’s taken us so long to sort it out! Mahal, I thought you were going to leap out of that bed and gut me, just now. No wonder, though — I’ve seen how you are with food. Anything else?”

Bilbo squinted, in a look that asked, What do you mean?

“The food’s been a problem,” Bofur said. “Fair enough, we can sort that out. You don’t want to hear about the quest; all right, we can find other ways to entertain you! Anything else you want to complain about?”

There was the instinct, of course, to bluster and fluster and say there was nothing to complain about at all — that his diatribe just now on the subject of his sickbed diet had been a lapse in judgement not to be repeated. But Bilbo remembered the advice offered by both Bifur and Verthandi, regarding the need to speak honestly about what was bothering him, and he knew it would be very, very difficult to muster the courage to complain again.

Now or never.

“I also wonder if you all in the Company wouldn’t– wouldn’t reconsider your obligation to visit me so… so often,” Bilbo stuttered. “I can’t help but think about the vast commitment of time, on your part. Which I appreciate! But, well. It is tiresome to be able to host visitors only from my bed, and so it must be equally tiresome for you all to visit me, I– um. I daresay!”

Bofur looked affronted, which was exactly what Bilbo had hoped to avoid. “Nobody thinks it’s tiresome, Bilbo. We all want to see you.”

“And while that is such a thoughtful sentiment,” Bilbo emphasized, “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I promise we don’t. Why would you think that, after all our visits?”

Bilbo took in and let out a long breath.

He should think the answers to Bofur’s question were as obvious as they were plentiful. Bilbo was a hobbit, and everything hobbitish was dull to a dwarf. He’d never liked needing to invent endless topics of discussion for the entertainment of his guests; it made him snappish and unpleasant to be around, and this was only made worse when Bilbo could sense his Shire neighbors’ frustration, in turn. Bilbo couldn’t remember any of the dwarven habits and mannerisms he had surely picked up since the days of the quest. And the dwarves hadn’t even liked that version of Bilbo, anyway — so it was bad news indeed, that he should be returned to the exact fellow they’d not been keen to have join them!

Any one of these things should send the Company running in the other direction, rather than queuing up to visit him.

Seven years, though… Bofur had probably forgotten what Bilbo had really been like, back during the days of the quest, ha! It was one thing to recall their journey, together, and the way Bilbo had acted back then. It was another thing entirely to be sent back into the constant, claustrophobic proximity that risked reminding the dwarves of exactly that: what a reserved and ordinary sort of creature Bilbo had been before, and which he likely now would continue to be.

When Bilbo didn’t reply, Bofur pulled out a pocket watch: a slim disk of gold with a crystal-covered face. He grinned down at it.

“We all want to visit you, Bilbo, genuinely. Remember what I said? You’re one of us. You’re one of the Company. Give me a few more minutes and I’ll prove it to you.” With a sigh, he snapped the watch closed and brought his attention back to Bilbo. “But this is your way of telling me that you don’t want so many callers.”

“Well, I’m… stretched a little thin.” Bilbo cleared his throat. “Perhaps one per day.”

“I could probably sell folks on one a day, aye, but you’ve got to see Oin and Yinka daily, too.”

“All right,” Bilbo bartered. “But I want to be off bedrest.”

Bofur cocked his head and made a commiserating sort of face. “Well, that’s why you have to see Oin and Yinka every day, because I don’t know if I can promise that. But Thorin has been talking about setting up a parlor for you, once you’re cleared to be up and about. Can’t manage a kitchen in the Infirmary, but a parlor we could do.”

Bilbo was reminded acutely, then, that he did miss his kitchen, as well as his sitting room and study and bedroom and wine cellar and personal washroom and multiple clothes closets. These were all in Bag End, but if he could not be back there, a parlor would be a good start. An excellent start. It was good of Thorin to think of it.

At the mention of his husband, Bilbo started, “Thorin…” only to have Bofur throw up his hands in objection and tilt down his chin.

“That’s above my paygrade,” his friend said while shaking his uncovered head. He had clearly sussed out that Bilbo was hoping to ask some prying questions about the King. “I’ll listen to you all you want, if you’d care to talk about him. But I’m not sharing anything more about your relationship. It’s none of it for me to say.”

Ah, well. Bofur was not Dwalin, after all. “No, of course. Of course not, sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Bofur smiled, and then he clapped his hands down upon his thighs. “There, now. Do you feel better?

Bilbo smiled faintly. He certainly did feel better at the prospect of an improved diet, yes, and fewer visitors, and a sitting room with more space to move around in. But he also could not escape the crawling sensation that he had just been caught out in a lie.

He saw now that he should have said something about the food earlier, to avoid weeks and weeks of terrible menus. He should have barred the door against at least some of his visitors, well-wishers, and old friends. He was among dwarves, and dwarves complained. He should have complained.

But the feeling of having his dissatisfaction out in the open, knowing that it would be remarked upon amongst the Company when Bofur told them about staying away, and gossiped over amongst the kitchen staff when Oin arranged for his food to be made differently… It left him full of dread and embarrassment.

Well, Bilbo had acted incorrectly by keeping his discontent a secret; that much was clear. But he could not say it felt better to have that secret exposed. He should have chosen openness right away, or he should have said nothing about it, ever. One or the other. It was the worst of both worlds to have surrendered to both impulses: to have kept silent for so long, and then to have exposed his pettiness so abruptly.

And so he asked, to change the subject: “What exactly is in a curry, Bofur? It’s a stew, yes, I gathered that much. But I’d best be prepared when you bring it to me.”

Bofur burst out laughing again.

“You asking me to teach you about cookery…! Me! Ach, Bilbo, I never thought I’d see the day. Hoped I wouldn’t, in fact, since I know I can’t live up to your standards in the kitchen. Bombur’ll go banjaxed when he hears I’ve tried to teach you anything about curry. You’re signing my death warrant by making me go through with this conversation, I swear it–”

For all Bofur’s bluster, though, he did try to explain the flavor profile of a typical curry, and this was what he was doing when Fili happened to knock upon Bilbo’s sickroom door.

“Bilbo!” Fili beamed Bilbo’s direction. “Bofur!” He gave Bofur a smiling nod.

For some reason, this caused Bofur to aim a conspiratorial glance Bilbo’s way, and in a voice that oozed slick charm, he said: “Oh, your Highness! You know, Bilbo and I were having such a riveting conversation just now, that I think I’d like to stick around with you two a while longer. Hate to miss even a moment of banter.”

Fili’s smile slid from his face.

“But–” His gaze flickered from Bilbo to Bofur while his mouth opened and closed.

Bilbo peered over to see Bofur propping his chin upon his fist with a placid expression.

Fili straightened in the doorway and gave Bofur a cold and weighty look from the eye that was not covered by his eye patch. “That’s odd,” he said. “Because didn’t you tell me earlier that you had an… appointment to get to? With your paint supplier?”

“No,” replied Bofur, cheerfully.

Fili’s jaw flexed. “Sorry, my mistake. You must have said a very important meeting with your guildsmaster, then.”

“Not that I know of!” Bofur said, so brightly the sun wouldn’t outshine him.

Bilbo was surprised to hear Fili make a little squeaking noise, one that — in the Shire — Bilbo would associate with terrible offense. The lad widened his eyes at Bofur and breathed in sharpish through his nose, tilting his chin in challenge.

All of this, of course, provoked no response from Bofur.

After a long stretch of significant eye contact, Fili’s patience broke, and — casting a scandalized look towards and away from Bilbo — he hissed, “Bofur, get out!”

Bofur cupped his ear. “Sorry, what was that, Highness?”

Fili looked a heartbeat away from stomping his foot. When he replied, after a moment of sputtering, his voice was indeed a bit louder — but it was no less incensed, and he kept sending more of those furtive little looks Bilbo’s way, as if doing so would keep Bilbo from overhearing their conversation.

“This isn’t fair!” Fili said in that strange, lowered tone (which happened to sound more ostentatious than if he had just chosen to speak normally). “It’s my turn! You’ve already had your visit and you got seven extra minutes with him, besides, because my thing with the grammar school went long!”

When Bilbo turned to Bofur for explanation, Bofur was already looking right back, batting his eyelashes and fiddling with his pocket watch in a showy fashion.

I told you we all liked to call on you, the beatific expression on his face seemed to say.

“Do I have to get the contract?” Fili seethed when no one said anything. “Because I will! Bofur!”

Bilbo startled at this. He knew they had made a schedule, and Bofur’s usage of the pocket watch suggested that Fili’s arrival had been– well, like clockwork. But: “You made a contract for visiting me?”

“So no one would try and take up more than their allotted time with you,” Bofur said, and he flicked his hands out in an expansive gesture: Like me, just now. “Everyone has five hours a week — alone, that’s stipulated, but hours can be pooled with all parties’ consent.” The look on his face suddenly bordered on the somber and significant. “Now do you see how it is? Or do you still think we feel so terribly put-upon and awfully put-out, to have to come spend time with you?”

Bilbo tried to answer Bofur with a dour look of his own, but he found he couldn’t quite keep his lips from quirking — not enough to actually look stern. Despite himself, he was pleased to have such proof that the Company had changed their minds about him: they liked him! They liked spending time with him — even with this version of himself who had Forgotten! This thought caused a smile to pull at him relentlessly.

He wondered if they might let him see the visitation contract. Bilbo would love to see such an affection made legally binding.

“Now, Fili–” Bofur clapped his hands upon his knees. “I’m ‘fraid we both have to go. Bilbo’s feeling tired. We’ve all been taxing his patience, he says —”

(And here Bofur raised his voice over Bilbo’s attempt to deny saying any such thing.)

“— So it’s high time we let him have a say in who visits, and let him have some peace and quiet, too, while we’re at it. One visitor a day, only, from now on. New rules.”

For a moment, Fili looked rather bereft, and his posture — ramrod straight from his earlier righteous indignation — deflated.

But then he said, “Oh, all right. One visitor a day. We’re going to have to draw up a new contract, you know.”

“I should like to be involved this time, if you please,” Bilbo cut in. “You said ‘all parties’ consent’ earlier, but there was one party you declined to consult. A rather conspicuous oversight, you might say.”

Fili grimaced and play-staggered backwards. “Right in the heart, Bilbo! But aye, that’s fair.” He sighed, but he smiled all the same. “Well, I guess that’s my afternoon freed up! I should check with Balin and see if he has any other leftover royal chores that need doing.”

He lingered in the doorway while Bofur arose from the visitor’s chair and gathered up his hat and jacket and workbag.

“I’ll go fetch you your curry, Bilbo,” Bofur said, once he had all of his things. “And then I’ll leave you alone, I promise.”

He patted at Bilbo’s knee and went over to the threshold, where Fili gave off an irritated huff and gazed at Bofur with an abiding absence of admiration.

Bofur took the opportunity to thump himself over the head, so that his hat was more securely situated.

“Figures you would be the last one to get to visit at all hours, any day you pleased,” Fili muttered, and then turned to Bilbo. “Bofur always does get the very last of your patience. Whether that’s because he’s charming enough to outlast us all, or annoying enough to drive you to the edge, I’ll never know.”

And at this, Bofur guffawed, entirely unrepentant.

--

When Thorin — the war hero styled Oakenshield, who was both King Under the Mountain and Bilbo’s lord husband — finally did return for another visit, it was because both he and Bilbo were meant to play host to King Bard of Dale and Esgaroth. Said King of Men would be escorting up to Erebor the very workman who had been in charge of bricklaying at the site where Bilbo had encountered his accident. This working fellow (Yorick was his name) felt responsible for Bilbo’s injury, and wanted to offer what apology he could.

So, obviously — between the various types of royalty, and the inter-species politics, and the usual liability involved in workplace-related accidents — Bilbo knew the occasion would not be without its myriad stressors.

He had at first thought it a little unfair, honestly, that he was being asked to entertain such a meeting at all, after he had done his complaining to Bofur on the subject of keeping company! And the whole thing sounded risky, too, since the news of Bilbo’s Forgetting was still meant to be hush-hush. But Balin had come back to ask, personally, if Bilbo would be willing to permit the visit, and to accept the apology. Bilbo had been so pleased to see his friend again (and was so flattered to hear how much Balin regretted the need for his absence) that he agreed. Anything to lessen his friend’s workload... and Balin had made his case very convincingly, besides!

“I think it would be good for you and the kingdom, laddie,” he’d said significantly, “if you hosted Bard in the Infirmary. I know it’s too soon for you to be out showing your wounds to the crowds, but it might be prudent to at least put the iron in the fire. Get the process started. You know how it is.”

Bilbo didn’t know how it was. But under Balin’s twinkling gaze, he felt swayed, nevertheless. Bilbo had been recovering for nearly a month now, it must be said– and he could recognize, at this point, that he was bored enough to start assuming all his visitors were finding his company equally dull– and even growing up as he had in the provincial world of the Shire, Bilbo knew that an incident like this should not be allowed to fester between the dwarves and the men! The whole thing ought to be resolved as quickly and peaceably as possible, and it sounded like they already put it off for a great length of time, the better to let Bilbo recuperate.

So: the lawn was cleared and the pins were laid, as Bilbo’s father would have said. Now it was time to bowl.

At least Bilbo had graduated from the need for total bedrest! He sat now in the little parlor that Thorin had arranged next door to the sickroom; it was much more spacious, with a merry fireplace, lovely hanging lamps, and a series of exceedingly elaborate, abstract carvings on the walls.

All this suggested to Bilbo that his small and simple sickroom was really not meant for convalescing at all. Such suspicion was amplified by the way an enormous mirror had been set up in the hallway outside of this new sitting room. It was angled so that it reflected the window in his sickroom and allowed light to stream into the windowless parlor.

“Sunshine and sight of sky,” Oin boomed when Bilbo had thanked him and Yinka for such a kind gesture. “After seven years, you’ve taught Thorin well what pleases a hobbit! And so that’s what you’ll have, especially when you’re recuperating.”

Bilbo found the whole thing terribly thoughtful! But it also reminded him that there wasn’t room for more than a bed, a hutch, and a chair (or two, if you squeezed) in his little sickroom, and that the space itself was comparatively bare of decoration and furnishings. It had probably been a closet, when you got right down to it. The dwarves had likely put him there because it was the only place in the Infirmary with a window to the outside!

To think: Bilbo made his home under a Mountain, now. Hobbits lived underground, yes, but never far from the light of the sun. He worried distantly about what it might mean, to live in a place where the only rooms with windows were storage closets.

In any case, Bilbo’s new parlor was looking fairly sparse today, too, just like his sickroom. The fire was lit, as was every single one of the hanging lamps, so that the very air seemed to glint with comfort and splendor. But now there was only one wing-backed armchair in the space — where usually there were two or three more, for callers — and it was set up at the far end of the vast ornamental rug. This sole chair faced the door head-on, rather than sitting at an inviting angle towards the hearth. The set-up was odd, but Bilbo went to sit down anyway, since he figured he ought to conserve his strength for the trial to come.

Blessedly, he thought he could at least feel confident in his attire! When the parlor had first been set up, Bilbo had only had to do one day of entertaining in his sickroom nightgown (and was actually in the process of gathering courage to send for whatever real clothes his past self had worn as Consort) before Dori had hastened in with several easy sorts of outfits, which were much more suitable. Bilbo was therefore dressed, this morning, in some indigo trousers in a truly extraordinary velvet, alongside a quilted jacket of blue satin and a simple white shirt. The effect managed to be both formal and comfortable at once. Bilbo smoothed his lapels, now, and waited for his husband to collect him.

When Thorin did arrive, he was better dressed than Bilbo had ever seen him: decked out in silver fur and the same deep blue velvet Bilbo recognized from his own trousers. And of course he was wearing a shining silver crown, like a figure straight from Bilbo’s fevered tweenage scribblings.

Thorin looked delectable, and Bilbo knew he should stop feeling so shocked and embarrassed to find himself thinking so.

“How are you feeling?” Thorin asked immediately, urgently. “Well, I hope?”

You might have called upon me sooner, if you were so curious, Bilbo didn’t say, because it would be cruel to do so after Dwalin had shared that Thorin was so upset. While Balin could clear his schedule to visit Bilbo, that did not mean that Thorin could so easily clear his heart of misery.

But: “Good afternoon,” Bilbo said pointedly, for Thorin had offered no greeting of his own. “And yes, I am very well, thank you.” He drummed his hands upon the arms of his chair and made to stand. “Now, I do feel up for a walk, but not one that’s terribly long. Where is it we’re meeting them?”

Thorin approached Bilbo’s seat and seemed almost to pose himself next to it, like a sentinel taking up his long-accustomed watch. Bilbo felt, instantly and absurdly, as if his armchair had been transformed into a throne.

“Here,” Thorin said in explanation. “They have reached the Gate, now, and they will be shown up momentarily.”

“Here?” Bilbo startled. “But–”

He looked around the room — though he was careful not to whip his head about — realizing that the scarcity of furniture he had noticed before did in fact suggest a degree of ceremony. Still, they were in the Infirmary! It would be like offering a visitor tea service in one’s closet!

“Hadn’t we better find some sort of… receiving room? Throne room?”

Thorin frowned. “I won’t have you jostling your head and tiring yourself on a walk for no good reason. This will serve fine for today’s purposes.”

Bilbo’s indignation escaped in a squeak. “But this isn’t any sort of place for hosting. There’s not even places for everyone to sit!”

“This is an apology, and a matter of state,” Thorin said in a droll sort of tone. “They will come and pay homage here, and they’ll stand and show you the respect you deserve. Anyway, it will keep them from overstaying their welcome.”

Bilbo was torn between thinking, on the one hand, that this last bit about overstayed welcomes made marvelous good sense and, on the other, that it was a scandalous way to treat guests. And so he fell completely silent.

Thorin peered down at him.

“I wonder if I may ask,” the King started, and his eyes flicked away: staring out the doorway, studying the white rectangle of cloudy sky visible there in the mirror. “Have you recalled any memories, since last we spoke?”

Bilbo swallowed. “…I am afraid not, no.”

Thorin nodded. If he was disappointed — as he surely must be — no such feeling was visible in his perfectly blank expression, and the lack of emotion needled Bilbo, for a moment.

It was much, much harder, he realized, to imagine the depth of Thorin’s grief whilst he was actually in the room with you. Talking with Dwalin a few days before, the devastation of losing a loved one to the Forgetting had loomed large, like some horrible, unknowable shape you spotted from across the room in the middle of the night. In the abstract like that — as if you had only just awakened and peered over, half-asleep — Thorin’s feelings could be anything, though they were doubtlessly massive and harrowing.

But now that Thorin was here, in front of Bilbo, it was as if a candle had been lit to banish all that darkness away. The frightening shape, in turn, was revealed to be nothing more than a crumpled jacket tossed carelessly onto an armchair. In that candlelight, it was hard to turn such a harmless thing back into an immense, ineffable shadow, and likewise, in the light of day and looking at Thorin’s handsome, impassive face, it was hard to imagine anyone — let alone Thorin himself — feeling so wretched.

It was unfair of Bilbo to sit there and look Thorin in the eye and suppose the King incapable of deep emotion. Bilbo knew it. But it was just that he had only known Thorin on the road, up until this point… and Thorin-on-the-road was a hardy, severe sort of fellow! It was difficult to picture that Thorin ever being sad. Angry and disappointed, yes, Bilbo had witnessed that often enough; he had even seen Thorin appear vaguely contented, at times. But he was never melancholy, and never vulnerable.

Oh, but–

Bilbo suddenly recalled Thorin’s unshed tears during their last two meetings. His bloodless cheeks. His hollowed-out expression.

And Bilbo had, admittedly, not reacted well at all to anything the last time they spoke. He had shrunk away from the idea of Thorin as his husband so badly that the love lost between the two of them could scarcely have been more obvious, nor more painful.

He felt the creeping realization that Thorin’s flat look should hurt him worse than if the King had scowled or wept outright. Because that look meant Thorin was hiding. Of course he would not want to relive the distress Bilbo had caused with his rejection of their marriage. Of course Thorin would turn away and mask all feeling, hoping that, if he waited long enough to look in on Bilbo again, his husband would miraculously remember everything, and all would be resolved and restored to perfect normality.

And so, with care, Bilbo forced himself to rethink his situation. This was not the careless and churlish Thorin from the road to Erebor. This Thorin was his husband, and it was very brave of him, in fact, to come back and visit at all, after such a loss as he had endured; such a loss as Bilbo repeatedly discounted and ignored.

“Thorin,” Bilbo said in a rush, wanting to encourage such bravery and apologize for his own earlier unkindness. “I am sorry for the way I reacted to the news of our marriage. I was– very– ”

Here Bilbo felt himself choke, and trip over his words — and then he coughed to try and cover it up, and then he made a distressed sort of sound when he realized what a hash he was making of this apology, which was of course meant to make up for the hash he had made of Thorin’s disclosure of their marriage in the first place.

After his throat was clear, Bilbo started again. “I was very surprised, and that made me ungracious. I know I reacted shamefully, so please accept my apologies for any discomfort I may have caused. I– I… It was poorly done, I know, and I’m sorry for it.”

He braved a look up at Thorin’s face once more, to find the King frowning mightily.

“Bilbo, no. It must have been a great shock to you.” And Thorin’s expression began to rearrange itself in a significant but unreadable way: twisted mouth, raised brows. “And… I grant that any romance between us must seem– implausible, to you right now. What conduct of mine you can remember does not cast me in any sort of flattering light. On that much, we can agree.”

Bilbo blushed, because Thorin was speaking very frankly here, and what’s more, he was speaking truth: he had been unkind to Bilbo on the quest. He had made Bilbo miserable.

But Bilbo also knew that he was a hobbit, and it was a hobbit’s job to be polite in all circumstances. Bilbo had completely failed in that regard when he had scoffed at their marriage and sent Thorin (his husband!) away from his side, looking so hopeless and ashamed. Thorin may have been uncivil to Bilbo in the past, but that was no excuse for Bilbo’s abominable behavior in the present.

He should have been much kinder to Thorin when faced with the news, those weeks ago! He should have had a greater care for Thorin’s feelings, and not been so honest — not when honesty in this instance was synonymous with rudeness, thoughtlessness, hurtfulness.

But, well, dwarves were honest, weren’t they? They were blunt and direct when they said what they meant.

“I just didn’t know what to say,” Bilbo said, tentatively trying dwarven communication on for size. It made his voice shake — since, goodness, such openness was uncomfortable! — but Bilbo had ranged so far beyond anything hobbitish, at this point, that he was married to a dwarf, for crying out loud. And he could not imagine he had won Thorin over with any tidy Shire niceties, back when they were courting.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Bilbo said again, “and I’m afraid I still don’t. I don’t mean to hurt you, but it’s — very unpleasant. Not knowing what to do, about any of this, at all.”

To Bilbo’s relief, Thorin’s expression softened.

“You don’t have to do anything, Bilbo,” he said solemnly. “It was good of you, to agree to hear this apology from the menfolk, but you are never obligated to do or say anything beyond what you wish. I only want you to feel comfortable, and safe — so I would have you act in whatever way furthers your recovery.”

Bilbo wondered what ‘recovery’ meant. Healing the great gash on his head, yes, but the recovery and retrieval of Bilbo’s memories must also be of prime concern to Thorin.

“Thank you,” was what Bilbo said aloud. “That’s very kind.”

“It is only what kindness you deserve,” Thorin said with an intense earnestness.

He made a move forward, as if he wished to lay a hand upon the arm of Bilbo’s chair — or perhaps upon Bilbo’s own arm, settled just a few inches away. Thorin hesitated, but at last he did touch the tips of his fingers to the upholstery, steadying himself as he knelt beside Bilbo’s seat. Bilbo’s heart was pounding in his chest.

“And Bilbo,” Thorin said, his voice lower now that their faces were closer together. “I would make my own apologies. I am sorry for the way I treated you back in the days of the quest. I know I was impatient, and cruel to you. When I heard the extent of what you remembered from the journey– what little time it covered–” Thorin paused, pale-faced and stumbling over his words. “You forgave me for it before, years ago. And we became friends, and we married, but please know that I in no way consider myself entitled to your forgiveness a second time. You are under no obligation: not to see me, nor to be a friend to me, nor to act as my husband. I make no claims on your time, or your body–”

Hearing this reference to their conjugal state, Bilbo could not stop his face from going funny; he felt his mouth take on a jumbled sort of smile, and his face flared red again — its color having barely eased from earlier, when he had first tried to apologize to Thorin.

Thorin himself seemed horrified that he had mentioned anything to do with bodies. He looked as regretful as Bilbo had ever seen him, and Bilbo had watched him get the Company so lost that they had needed to double back for hours to find the correct heading. And he had done so twice (twice!) in the scant four weeks that Bilbo could remember knowing him, on the road.

Through this pause, Bilbo realized that the flushed warmth upon his cheeks seemed also to be affecting his chest, and it did not feel like a heat from embarrassment alone. There was affection there, too: deeper than Bilbo could reason through, since he could no longer remember learning to trust Thorin. But his body did remember, and the affection was clearly rooted in deep, as deep as his bones.

“Thank you,” Bilbo said again, to step in and save Thorin from his fluster, “for being a friend to me. And for your apology. I do forgive you.”

(Bilbo decided, as he said this, that it was true, more or less — he probably did forgive Thorin, and in any case, he must at least say so, for Thorin’s apology had been pretty indeed, and it fulfilled many a bitter little fantasy Bilbo had entertained on the road: of Thorin realizing what an absolute pill he was being towards Bilbo, feeling terribly guilty over it, and falling all over himself to atone.)

Bilbo continued, “I’m glad matters ended up improving between us, and that we can start over now, too.” But here the warm feeling in his chest cooled a bit. “Though I know it must be difficult, that you must start over with me, of all people. I surely took a dear companion from you, when I lost my memories.”

Thorin made a gruff, unhappy sound. “You haven’t taken anything from me. I have lost nothing; you’re still right here.”

Bilbo made a quick little smile, hoping that it would communicate a sense of gratefulness to Thorin for this sentiment —

(Thorin had changed indeed, to have so many charming trifles ready with which to ply his husband!)

— but privately, Bilbo could not really agree with the idea that he had taken nothing from Thorin.

He was very grateful that Thorin told him so, and perhaps Thorin even believed it, for now. But as Bilbo had just admitted: he hadn’t recalled one single memory since he’d regained consciousness after his accident. Time was stealing away his hope that he would remember anything, and so time could also do nothing but remind Thorin of all the differences between the hobbit who had left the Shire for the quest, and the hobbit whom Thorin had decided to marry.

Eventually, when Bilbo still remembered nothing... then it would surely feel as if Bilbo had stolen himself away. But here Bilbo made himself breathe deep. And he reminded himself that only a fool looked a gift pony in the mouth.

He had been so attracted, after all, to the Thorin he had been introduced to, that first night in Bag End — bemoaning only that this splendid, kingly figure straight out of legend was also unkind.

And now, knelt here before him, was a Thorin tailor-made from the cloth of Bilbo’s daydreams: attentive, considerate, and still brutally handsome. Thorin had changed! If Bilbo was smart, he would fit himself into the accompanying niche at Thorin’s side and be satisfied with that. If Thorin had changed, surely Bilbo could change, too.

So he turned to face Thorin as fully as he could, and rested both of his hands on top of the one that Thorin had placed upon his chair.

“All right. We’re agreed; I’ve taken nothing from you. Some burglar I am!” Bilbo grinned in a way he hoped was winsome. “I hope, at least, that I managed to steal away whatever it was you needed from the dragon. I find such a thing hard to imagine. Maybe– you could tell me about it? Yourself, sometime?”

This, for whatever reason, made Thorin frown, and he was still frowning when they both heard footsteps approaching the sitting room. Before Bilbo could figure out what to say in the face of such an unhappy look, Thorin was standing back upright and Balin was gesturing three menfolk forward into the room, bidding them stand before Bilbo’s armchair.

The first man was of middling age and attired in light summer wool in simple shades of brown, though he wore a gold-paneled belt at his waist and a matching golden circlet upon his head. This man with the gold, then, must be the King, Bilbo mused to himself.

The second figure, who entered right behind the first, was a young lady much more interestingly dressed; her long gown was cut very plain, but was notably extravagant in its glittering fabric, since the yellow cloth was darted through all over with golden thread. She also wore a little starched-white headdress over her curly, brass-colored hair. This was obviously cousin to the brightly-colored wraps that Yinka wore day-to-day, but this lady’s did look a bit more like a tea towel folded up upon her head. That silly thought made the whole prospect of this meeting seem less fearsome, to Bilbo’s mind.

The last fellow was a little younger than the King, though dressed in much the same way — minus the gold — and carrying a big buckram bag slung over his shoulder. He was also moving slowly on wooden crutches, for his leg was cast stiffly straight in a great big splint.

“Oh, no! Your poor leg!” Bilbo couldn’t help but cry. “Are you quite all right, sir?”

The man’s entire expression seemed to wobble from strong emotion. “Oh, your Majesty,” he started– but then sent a furtive glance towards the Dalish King, who looked at Bilbo with a playful little grimace that said, as clearly as speaking, Oops. We’ve spoken out of turn.

“Your Majesties,” Balin cut in, stepping forward and sketching a brief bow before Bilbo’s chair. His expression was mildly amused, so Bilbo assumed that there had been no serious faux-pas in Bilbo speaking first. “I present to you King Bard of Dale and Esgaroth; his daughter, the Lady Tilda of Dale and Esgaroth; and Guildsman Yorick, son of Drystan.”

The King and the Lady made shallow genuflections — the Lady, in fact, smiled up at Bilbo with dancing eyes instead of lowering her head as her father did, and she made a little wave with the hand that was not holding her lemon-colored skirt to the side — while the Guildsman bowed as deeply as he could while propped up on his crutches.

“Please don’t trouble yourself with all that!” Bilbo fluttered a hand at Yorick, the man with the broken leg. “By my soles! I wonder that you even came up here today, with such an injury.”

Guildsman Yorick was a gingery, freckled, and above all, rangy sort of fellow; Bilbo almost could not get past the impression that someone had stretched him out again and again over a candy pulling hook. But all three of these Big Folk were so– long! Skinny, and pinched, somehow, unlike any hobbit, dwarf, or even wizard Bilbo had ever seen. He worried absently if folks were getting enough to eat, in Dale and Esgaroth. He wondered who he could ask, how he might go about checking in on such a thing…

“I had to come, your Majesty,” Yorick insisted. His voice was grave as death, and it drew Bilbo’s attention away from the man’s great height. “I had to. A blow to the head is a far worse wound than a break in the leg, and you didn’t wake as they moved you. We’d heard you was on the mend, but I had to come see for meself, and– and to apologize to you, sir.”

Bilbo’s mouth fell open in realization.

“You were injured, too,” he surmised. “In the fall.”

Yorick nodded. He seemed too overwhelmed to speak.

“I’m so sorry for it!” said Bilbo. “And yes, I was told this visit would involve an apology, which I will be happy to hear — but you should know that it will not change the fact that I have no interest at all in ascribing blame for what happened.”

He smiled at Yorick and deliberately did not turn to look at Thorin. Whatever had happened down in Dale, Bilbo had heard enough from Balin and Ori to know that it should not be allowed to raise a fuss inside the Mountain, and the best way to prevent that was to put it all behind them. If Thorin didn’t like it, he could scold Bilbo later, when they were out of company. Surely a King would afford him that courtesy, rather than haranguing him in public, as the old Thorin had done.

Yorick opened his mouth, and then closed it. After a moment, he did so again. Bilbo got the sudden feeling that his preemptive forgiveness had just scuppered some fine speech that Yorick had planned in advance, but also that Yorick might be unspeakably thankful for it.

“Your Majesty,” he began, taking a heaving breath. “That is– so generous. You are so kind.”

Bilbo sent Yorick a look that he hoped mingled apology and encouragement. Only trying to help, old sport! You’re doing wonderfully.

And this commiseration did indeed seem to bolster Yorick, a bit, enough at least to get him back on track: “But. Even so. On behalf of all the guildsmen and day-laborers of Dale, I do sincerely apologize for the terrible harm done to you. We’re most, most sorry, every one of us. You paid us the honor of your visit, and to have that repaid in such a way is a deep, deep wrong.

“I was the one in charge of that site. I oversaw that scaffolding go up, and after you were taken away, I ordered the site kept just as it was, so your folk could find out what went wrong! And I studied it meself, once I could get up and around. Sir, it was rotted planks what caused the scaffolding to fail. I would stake my life that it was an accident. I inspected the scaffolding every day, I swear it, not wanting something like this to happen — but I was so worried about the ropes, see, and the rot was at the joins, where the nails looked sound! So– So it did happen, your Majesty. And the fault must therefore be mine.”

Even an unsociable sort of hobbit could read countenance, and so throughout this speech, Bilbo observed Yorick’s face. The man was truly despondent: burdened by a genuine guilt that was etched into the minute changes of his expression. But Bilbo was relieved to note that for all his distress, Yorick did not appear frightened of Bilbo, or Thorin, or King Bard.

Back when he had first heard this meeting was going to take place, Bilbo had not felt prepared, per se, to defend Yorick from punishment —

(he was, after all, just a hobbit, for the love of the Lady; there was nary a need to champion anyone’s life or livelihood in the Shire! At most, you might be called upon to advocate for your neighbor’s right to sit in their garden without someone’s stinky pig grazing a few feet away.)

— but should the worst have come to pass, Bilbo had resolved to raise the ruckus of a lifetime to ensure Thorin would be kind to this poor fellow.

But it seemed there was no need. When Bilbo chanced a quick glance Thorin’s way, the King’s gaze was solemn and a little melancholy, but that was it. There was no trace of anger or vindictiveness at all.

“I accept all responsibility,” Yorick said, and his wavering voice and tensing mouth told Bilbo that the man’s emotion was really starting to get the better of him. “And your Majesty, I’m very, very sorry. I can’t say it enough. I’m so sorry. I can send the planks up to the Mountain so you can see, or your people can see– or they can come down if they want to see it in place, again, for themselves–”

Bilbo was quick to step in. “Mister Yorick, I trust you to know far more about wood and joinery and construction than I ever could! And you’ve shown yourself to be a consummate professional, to investigate the cause of the accident yourself. Thank you so much for doing so. And while I’m relieved to hear it was just a bit of bad luck, I’m not surprised at all to learn there was no foul play! Everything I’ve heard about Dale has told me that it’s full of the best sort of hardworking people, who are just trying to earn a living as best as they can, and so the fact of the matter is that accidents simply happen–”

Bilbo realized he was starting to sound like the Mayor, awash in the worst sort of political clichés. He resolved to wrap it up as quickly as possible.

“I’m sorry to have caused you so much pain and stress in this,” he said. “And I do appreciate your apology. And you came all the way up the Mountain to tell me, which I know must have been difficult indeed, with your injury!”

“It wasn’t far at all, sir,” Yorick said, and Bilbo supposed that might be true; he couldn’t remember how long the journey took. “And the day was very fair.”

Bilbo couldn’t help but glance at the greyness he could see in his mirror-window, and this seemed to prompt King Bard to speak up.

“The cloudiness meant we escaped the worst of the summer glare, for the time being,” he explained on Yorick's behalf. He directed a wink towards Bilbo, who took up the cue.

“Ah, the rain held off for you, at least!”

“So you think we will get some, today?” Lady Tilda jumped in to ask. Her voice was silvery and carried with it the sound of an irrepressible smile.

“Oh, not until this evening, I shouldn’t think. Perhaps overnight, if the wind doesn’t pick up. But I cannot imagine you’ll be caught in any foul weather on your way back to Dale, no.”

“That’s a stroke of good luck,” she replied before saying, in a heartfelt manner that implied some degree of friendship between them: “You always seem to know what the weather will do, your Majesty.”

“Just a matter of watching the skies, my dear — they aren’t very good at keeping secrets, most of the time. Not from a hobbit, at least!”

Bilbo said this automatically, before he could stop and wonder at how he was trading pleasant nothings with Big Folk, and royalty — Big Folk royalty! — just as he might with any of his neighbors on Bagshot Row. He wondered if Yorick’s turn towards talk of the weather was a custom of men, or if the fellow was revealing this as the sort of talk Bilbo tended to use as Consort, to soothe the nerves of those who visited him. They had met before in Dale, he shouldn’t forget; Yorick seemed to have been the one who to show him around.

The strangest thing was that it made him feel powerful: sensing the tension begin to dissipate from the room. The small talk seemed to gentle the atmosphere just as a calm tone of voice might gentle a pony. To have such an effect on others was wondrous and unfamiliar; to feel as if he was acting correctly for once was intoxicating.

It had never felt like this in the Shire, and now it made him feel unexpectedly well-suited to this little armchair throne: being the only person in the room seated, saluted and bowed over; extracting from nobility the sort of small talk he had once thought so pedestrian and unnecessary during his usual afternoon tea visits. His role as Consort suddenly seemed laid out before him as plainly as the rug set before his feet.

So that was a bit of hobbitish posturing, he mused to himself. Now let’s try some dwarven directness.

“Mister Yorick,” he said, trying to make his voice as deliberate as possible. “I fell, and I see you did, too. I’ll accept your apology, if you accept mine for putting you in such a position to be injured yourself. I’ll add in my immense gratitude, as well, for your diligence with the worksite and the investigation. It’s put my mind quite at ease. With my recovery humming along — and hopefully with yours proceeding apace, as well — I don’t see why we shouldn’t put this whole thing behind us!”

He folded his hands in his lap. That’s that on that.

“Yorick won’t tell you so, because he is modest,” King Bard spoke up, “but he’s moved that all workers should wear war helms while on the building site, and that helms be offered to anyone who comes to visit.”

“A capital idea!” Bilbo exclaimed. “And so you see, I’m recovering just fine, and some good has come out of the whole affair. All’s well that ends well.”

He resolutely did not look at Thorin when he said this, knowing that this state of affairs, with the Forgetting, and Bilbo’s reversion back to his dull old Shire self, and the threat of a return to the chilly and awkward relations that had existed between them on the quest… Well, none of that could in any way constitute a happy ending for his husband.

Yorick, looking a little pinkish and bashful now, shouldered his way out of the buckram bag Bilbo had noticed when the mannish contingent first entered the room.

“I have a gift for you, too, your Majesty. The workers all pitched in. It’s not much, but we wanted to bring a little brightness into the Mountain.”

When the bag was loosened, it revealed a broad wreath of summer flowers, woven up together to form a circle nearly the height of Bilbo himself! The arrangement of the blooms was expert and abundant, with a soothing palette full of frosty blues, greens, and purples. Bilbo recognized sage for scent; coneflowers and sea holly; hyssop and monkshood; as well as others he could not recall ever seeing before: mountain plants, surely, native only to this part of the world.

“My word,” Bilbo said, a little shocked by the sight of it. “Why, it’s just like something you might get in the Shire!”

But Bilbo never had gotten anything like this. Neither of his parents did any sort of plant weaving, and he had never advanced far enough in courting to receive such a thing.

“We all went out picking together, sir, and my daughter was the one what assembled it all. It’s said you favor flowers.”

“I do!” Bilbo realized, even as he said it, that he did find himself noticeably cheered by the wreath. The fresh, green smell of it was noticeable even from a few feet away. “I do. What is her name, your daughter?”

“Hanne, sir. Your Majesty.”

“Well, I thank you, and I thank dear Hanne, as well; please tell her so for me. It really is completely lovely! It’ll dry so nicely, too; I can already tell.” He wanted badly to hold the wreath in his own hands, but it was too large for that by half. “Thorin, would you–?”

Thorin went forward to accept the wreath from Yorick, so that the fellow wouldn’t have to manage it and his crutches at the same time. Its weight would hardly give a dwarf any trouble, but it was still quite wide for someone of Thorin’s height. Still, he had the wreath leveraged up onto the mantle of the fireplace before Bilbo could begin to worry over where to put it, and there it looked very fine indeed.

Against the dark green marble of the wall, the already-colorful blossoms became luminous, and where they caught the glowing light of the fire on the underside of their petals and leaves, they appeared gilded with gold. It was a very compelling sight, and Bilbo studied the construction of the wreath — woven from a combination of dried lake reeds and the thick green stalks of the fresh flowers, all braided together — for so long that he was surprised to turn back and find that conversation had not carried on without him! Rather, everyone in the room was studying Bilbo, instead: expectantly, from the middle of what he considered to be an unnecessarily awkward silence.

He really was in charge, here.

“Guildsman Yorick,” Thorin said, when Bilbo looked up to him for help. “Would you care to visit with the Physician Yinka?”

“We all should,” Lady Tilda chimed in, causing Yorick to finally stop staring at Bilbo when he turned to look at her. “I don’t recall anyone coming up to the Mountain this week, so she’ll not have had any visitors. Yorick, if you would go first — we will join you when the necessary state business has concluded.”

“Balin may escort you,” Thorin prompted, and Balin did indeed detach from his place beside the doorway and gesture for Yorick to make his way out. And Yorick did, though not before bowing even more deeply than he had upon entering the room.

Once he had reluctantly turned away, and once the sound of his feet and crutches had faded down the hallway…

King Bard and Lady Tilda relaxed! And Bilbo did mean relaxed: as one, both royals drooped like soufflés punctured by eager dessert spoons.

Bilbo realized at once that they must both be much younger than he had originally thought. King Bard was surely at least a decade younger than Bilbo himself, and Lady Tilda could not be far out of girlhood. It was a little shocking, really, to watch as the Lady’s impeccable posture loosened when she placed her hands on her hips and let her whole spine slouch; to watch as the King shook out his arms and even removed the circlet from off his forehead!

Bilbo turned to glance over his shoulder at Thorin and see what he made of this behavior, but Thorin’s posture had also eased. Bilbo stared as Thorin brought up a hand to lean against the wing-back of the armchair and used his other hand to curve around the inside of Bilbo’s bicep.

The King Under the Mountain leaned down to smile at his husband with a newly untroubled aspect.

“That was very well done, Bilbo,” he murmured, and he gave the swell of Bilbo’s arm a reassuring squeeze.

At this, a shudder of delight ran all through Bilbo. It was absolutely shocking to have Thorin’s full approval, and this was not even to mention the carefree touch of his hand, offered as if it were not a revelation! Even when Thorin took his hand back, that newly-familiar sticky-toffee feeling in Bilbo’s chest was there to stay. It felt as if his heart would simply stop, crowded as it was by that immense, sugary pressure settling over his lungs.

It was not unpleasant, but Bilbo had no idea how people managed to talk, to walk around, to live with such feeling bundled up inside their bodies. He couldn’t remember ever feeling any sensation so totalizing, save for the density of grief.

“Thank you, Bilbo.” King Bard said, managing to draw the hobbit’s attention back to their guests. “You’ve got to be the kindest fellow I’ve ever met, to comfort others in the middle of such an injury — to comfort the man who’s trying to take blame for it! If it’s any consolation, I think you’ve got a champion for life, now, in Yorick. He looked as if he was ready to swear a blood oath to you right that very moment.”

Oh, Bilbo thought with a dawning understanding. We are all royalty!

Bilbo managed to salvage this realization from all his other observations. Yorick was not royal, and so there had needed to be some playacted formality in front of him. But now that they were alone with Bilbo and Thorin — themselves monarchs! — King Bard and his daughter could carry themselves as freely as they wished, as evinced by Bard’s open grin and the way that Tilda laughed before she said:

“He was so nervous, when we had to pass through all the crowds waiting outside, but now you’re got him just as loyal as any one of your subjects. We should be worried that he’ll defect from Dale and take up at your side as your bodyguard!”

“You’ve already stolen Yinka from us.” Bard’s eyes glittered, and he settled his hands in a loose grip upon his belt. “How many hostages are you going to take?”

Bilbo (who, even before his head injury, had given up on pretending he did not pay attention to Thorin whenever he was in the vicinity) sensed his husband’s relaxation from moments earlier vanish, at this. Though Thorin barely moved, his whole body still seemed to sway in place, as if taking a blow, and his hand tightened enough on the back of the chair to make it creak.

Well, clearly, Bilbo was missing something. He settled his hands upon the chair’s armrests and cleared his throat, hoping to make a point of how he had not relaxed.

“Please, we don’t mean to keep anyone as a hostage.” He hoped that saying so wasn’t rude — surely it couldn’t be rude, to reassure a neighboring kingdom that you had no designs upon their citizens? — but all the same, he couldn’t stand to have Thorin insulted, if that was what was happening here. “All are free to leave the Mountain as they see fit.”

His eyebrows twitched downward, though, as he was struck by a new worry.

“Has Yinka thought herself a prisoner here?” he tried again. “Have I been keeping from her family?”

He hadn’t thought so; Yinka had said she was unmarried, without children, when they had their chats. But maybe Bilbo was keeping her from her friends, or her animals or garden– Certainly he was detaining her from her medical practice in Dale–

But this new worry passed, when he saw the startled expressions on Bard and Tilda’s faces.

Bard, in fact, began to look embarrassed more than anything else, when he said, “It was a joke, only, Bilbo. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have suggested anything of the sort. We know well and good that there are no prisoners between our peoples.”

Bilbo watched, over Bard’s shoulder, as Balin came back into the room, evidently finished with his task of escorting Yorick away. Bard noticed Bilbo looking away, and he turned in place, half a step off-balance, to see where Bilbo’s attention had gone.

Tilda made her own little swaying turn and said in a cheerful voice, obviously keen to change the subject: “Do you like my dress, Bilbo?”

“Oh, yes, it’s lovely!” Bilbo replied, equally eager to take up the peace offering. He watched as Tilda swept the skirt from side-to-side; in the firelight, the yellow cloth shimmered like the surface of a lake at sunset. “Is it new? Where on earth did you find such a fabric?”

Tilda’s smile slid into flat uncertainty. “It’s… the cloth of gold? From the new trade route we arranged. It’s all our hard work paid off, see?”

Bilbo opened his mouth — but could do nothing more than close it again, when no good response surfaced in his mind.

He realized he truly had no idea what to say. He had heard, from Yinka, of the new goods coming in from parts unknown. But he’d had no idea he had been involved in such commerce. Or that he apparently contributed to arranging it.

This is where the dratted memories would have come in handy, of course, because he simply didn’t remember the trade route, or his role in it, and he had no idea how to pretend he did without seeming rude or unfriendly. And it had been going so well, too, right up until Yorick was out of the room! Surely that was a bad sign: if he could only succeed as Consort when he was speaking with people he did not really know, people who needed no more than good posture and fancy words to be impressed.

Bilbo should have trusted his suspicion that acting as Consort would mean only a more miserable version of Shire socializing: fine if you were speaking to passing acquaintances, but disastrous when trying to stay close with friends. He had never been able to keep track of all the Hobbiton gossip because it had never held his attention; this disinterest was interpreted as callousness, since he never could remember all the little details of other people’s lives. His close chums in town were therefore few and far between.

It figured that now — the one time he actually wished to prove himself a considerate friend and worthwhile ally! — he still wouldn’t be able to pull it off. His Forgetting would be interpreted as callousness all the same.

Bilbo turned his face to the side to seek guidance from Thorin, again. He dreaded Thorin’s disappointment, and dreaded reminding the King that Bilbo was a nuisance. But he didn’t want to make things worse for Erebor, either, and so he looked up, hoping for a rescue.

He happened instead to catch the tail-end of a look that Thorin was sharing with Balin, who was still standing beside the door, and then Thorin leaned down again and spoke lowly in Bilbo’s ear: “You should feel free to tell them about– about the Forgetting.”

“Really?” Bilbo blinked. “Are you sure?”

“It is your decision, of course. But they are dear friends to you, and in the past, you have trusted them to be discreet. You should tell them what you will.”

Bilbo gazed up at Thorin just a moment more, trying to determine what he meant by this, what decision Thorin might be trying to nudge him towards and why. But Bilbo was also aware there wasn’t much time to ponder such things, not with two royals standing before them, watching with careful eyes.

“I can tell them, if you like,” Thorin said.

So he did want Bilbo to tell the menfolk about the Forgetting.

“No, no, don’t trouble yourself,” Bilbo said, for Thorin should not be forced to tell other people — other rulers — about the loss of his own husband. It would be too cruel.

Still, that left the matter to him, and he bit his lip as his mind scrabbled for the right way to phrase such a disclosure. The low burr of pain that he now encountered whenever he overexerted himself started up in his head, but he pushed it resolutely to the side.

“I must make a confession,” he said in a louder tone of voice, turning his face back towards Tilda and Bard. “The injury I sustained left me physically unharmed, on the whole — for which I am very grateful! But I’m afraid that it resulted in an injury that is somewhat common to hobbits, when we've been dealt a blow to the head. It is called a Forgetting. It means I have forgotten about seven years of my life, and lost all my memories of that time. So I’m sorry to say that I– don’t remember anything about the Mountain, or Dale. Not right now.”

Bilbo hesitated here, but found there was really nothing else to say. He spread his hands a little helplessly and grimaced at Bard and Tilda, as if to communicate: it’s a pickle, I know — but what can you do!

They gaped at him.

“…Seven years?” Bard repeated eventually. Beside Bilbo, Thorin had once again gone tense. “You don’t remember seven years? Any of it?”

“But that would mean–” Tilda made a sort of craning motion with her neck as she tried to puzzle this through. It caused her headdress to quiver. “You mean, you don’t know us?”

“No,” Bilbo sighed. “I really am very sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t.”

“You don’t remember anything that’s happened? Not– Not the rebuilding?” she asked.

“No.”

“Or the trade negotiations?” she prompted.

“Or the Battle?” Bard tried next.

Bilbo shook his head.

“But Bilbo,” Tilda cried. “You’re– a hero! You saved so many people. You keep saving so many people– we wouldn’t have lasted a single winter without you. And your vanilla is just about to arrive! And your cardamom! And–”

Bilbo had not been expecting such a note of fear in Tilda’s voice, but he supposed she must be worried that his Forgetting would mean Dale and its rebuilding and trade routes were all destined to be abandoned. He hastened to say, “I’m re-learning all I need to, gradually. I will try to get up to speed as quickly as possible!”

He noticed that Bard was staring over Bilbo’s shoulder at Thorin, who stood stiff but silent. Bilbo waited for one of them to speak, but nothing seemed forthcoming even after a few moments of tense silence. Tilda, for her part, still looked devastated.

“I do hate to leave you all in the lurch, as it were,” Bilbo tried, desperate to ease the tension he could feel seizing the room again. “But I’m just not prepared yet to get back to work in Dale. I hope you understand; I mean no offense…”

He trailed off. He knew it would be more convenient for everyone if he could promise that he’d be back as soon as possible, but he just– couldn’t. He could not pledge such a thing. The enormity of his responsibility in Dale was becoming clearer and clearer as they spoke, revealing itself like the dreadful wideness of a river you needed to cross, such as might be exposed by receding fog while you waited for a rickety ferry to come pick you up. He resisted the urge to rub at his throbbing temples.

“I am proud of Bilbo for taking the time that he needs to recover,” Thorin spoke up at last. He looked down at Bilbo with the beginnings of encouragement in his eyes. “It would be easy for you to rush yourself, but you’ve been so diligent about your rest. It’s brought me much relief.”

“Oh, of course, you should not rush yourself, Bilbo!” Tilda said immediately —

(and Bilbo stared up at Thorin, rather shocked at how skillfully he had just guarded Bilbo’s recovery– how subtly he had used his support to reassure the menfolk that he was not at odds with Bilbo, regardless of his lost memories– such delicacy was almost– hobbitish–)

“But…” Tilda continued, tripping over her words with a dawning discomfort. “This means– It means that the accident took so much from you. You were kind to tell Yorick you weren’t any worse for wear, but– Bilbo, this is such a grievous injury–”

She stared helplessly at Bilbo, to the point that her father came up beside her to place a comforting and bracing hand upon her shoulder.

“How much do you remember?” Bard asked. “Seven years would take you back to your great journey from the West.”

Bilbo’s armchair creaked again as Thorin resettled his grip upon it.

“Oh, it’s hard to say,” Bilbo said with a deliberate lightness. He felt certain Bard’s questions were needling Thorin, somehow, and so Bilbo only smiled blankly, the better to discourage any further inquiry on the subject.

“We would not have word of this spread,” Thorin offered from over Bilbo’s shoulder. “You should of course tell Sigrid and Bain, but please, it is important for all of us that this story be told in the correct way, rather than through rumors or hearsay. Soon enough it will be out, but — not yet.”

Bard’s expression was unreadable, but Tilda nodded quickly, despite the disturbed look on her face.

“I know I have much to learn,” Bilbo offered, “but I hope we shall be friends again.”

At this, Tilda brightened a bit. “Of course we will be! Oh, Bilbo, I haven’t met a soul you couldn’t befriend. Please don’t worry about that.”

“And you’re always welcome in Dale,” Bard said. “For however long you’d like to stay with us. No forewarning necessary. We will be happy to host you, and there is much to see in our city that you have loved and will love again.”

Quick as a wink, Thorin’s hand was back upon Bilbo’s arm, clutching, tightening — but he removed his grasp just as fast, when he seemed to register what he’d done.

Bard watched this movement with canny eyes, and Tilda was back to looking troubled... but her expression was withdrawn, as if she were reviewing something within her own mind and ignoring everything outside of it. It reminded Bilbo of those moments in the Shire when he would glance out of his window and catch sight of some Gamgee child, stopped still in the middle of the lane outside: distressed to have forgotten what-all their mother had sent them out to borrow from a neighbor, or suddenly frustrated by the heavy heat of the afternoon, or dog-tired after a long walk home from the schoolhouse.

Bard sighed and resettled the arm at his daughter’s back as if to direct her out of the room, casting an apologetic look Bilbo’s way.

“We have taken up much of your time,” he said. “And what you’ve shared with us can only serve to prove twice over how generous you’ve been, in agreeing to meet with us at all. Bilbo, you have our best wishes for your recovery. We are, all of us, happy to help you in whatever way we can. We owe you a great deal, but more than that, you are our friend, and we love you. We desire only the best for you.”

Bilbo had to admit that he was pleased, to be spoken of so fondly and so formally. Tilda appeared moved, as well, for her eyes were now outsized with the beginnings of tears, catching the firelight to match her liquid, golden dress.

“Thank you,” Bilbo said to Bard, and then to Tilda, he let himself smile as he said, “My dear, you look entirely too sad! Would a hug help?”

Tilda let out a froggy sort of laugh and swept up to Bilbo, leaning down to embrace him: gently, but with no small amount of feeling.

“I’m sorry to be handling this so badly,” she said from where her chin was hooked over his shoulder. “The whole thing has nothing to do with me, I know; it’s just– a shock. Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Bilbo said, patting her on the back. “You know, selfishly, I’m happy to be liked well enough to provoke such a reaction!”

Tilda laughed again and squeezed him tight. Goodness, menfolk were strong!

“We’ll let you rest, but then I know Sigrid and Bain will want to visit you. Feel free to put us off for as long as you need, but hopefully you’ll be willing to receive us soon?”

“As soon as I’m able.” Bilbo felt he could commit to that much, at least.

Bilbo felt Tilda’s shaky sigh resonate in his own chest, but then she pulled back and gave him a wobbly, cheeky little curtsy that had Bilbo chuckling. Then Bard put his crown back onto his head, and the two of them were shuttled from the room by Balin. Bilbo and Thorin listened to them as their footsteps trailed away, and at last, the hallway was silent.

Bilbo slumped immediately against the wing-back of his chair.

For a moment, all was nothingness — he closed his eyes and swam through the pain-flavored darkness of his mind. The room seemed to tilt and careen, even though his eyes weren’t open to see it. He had never felt fatigue like this, in the Shire. How often he said that: this never happened in the Shire! He was starting to get as sick of hearing it as he was sick of it being true.

Ah, but Thorin was talking. Bilbo pulled his head upright and forced his eyelids wide and alert.

“–lucky there was no foul play, what with you giving out blanket pardons left and right,” Thorin groused, though he did not sound truly upset. This changed when next he said, “You’re trembling.”

Bilbo was. He was bone-tired, after all, and what was more, his nerves felt simultaneously warped and lax: like strings on a fiddle loosened and left distended, so that they hovered all unusable over the neckpiece.

Thorin was looking about himself now, searching for something, though he did not appear to find it. A blanket, Bilbo realized. Thorin was probably looking for a blanket, since he made do by pulling off his blue and silver mantle and circling it about Bilbo’s body.

It felt wonderful, straight away. Bilbo burrowed into the fall of it, up to his very nose; the heady scent of it would have filled Bilbo with warmth and comfort even without the accompanying heft of the mantle itself.

“I knew the apology would be taxing,” Thorin said in a distracted tone as he tilted Bilbo forward to fuss with the way the mantle gathered over his shoulders. He drew the opening closed under Bilbo's chin. “But I had hoped the visit from Bard and Tilda, at least, would cheer you.”

“Why on earth would it cheer me?” Bilbo wondered, glancing down to watch Thorin’s hands at work. They were so large, but they moved delicately upon the fur, smoothing out any folds that might bother Bilbo’s back when it rested against the chair.

Thorin stilled as he peered down at Bilbo. “They’re your friends,” he said after a moment, as if the answer were obvious.

Bilbo snorted. “I have never seen those people before in my life! I’m not sure who could be comforted by any old visit from strangers.” Realizing that this sounded surly, not to mention dismissive of Thorin’s political allies, Bilbo cleared his throat and began again, with just as much honesty but hopefully a greater degree of patience: “But they seem very agreeable. I’m sure we will be friends again soon enough.”

“You are already friends. Your Forgetting doesn’t change that.”

“That’s kind of you to say, but I noticed how disappointed they seemed, hearing how much I couldn’t remember.”

“Not disappointed,” Thorin said slowly. “Concerned. Worried for you, worried on your behalf.”

The King’s gaze, as he studied Bilbo, had begun to take on a guarded cast —

(Does such a look mean distrust? Bilbo puzzled wearily to himself. Does it mean I seem a stranger to him, or does it suggest he knows my ways too well? What’s worse?)

— and so Bilbo took the opportunity to ask, “And who are Sigrid and Bain?”

Thorin blinked, surprised yet again. “Oh. They are Bard’s eldest children, the first and second in line for the throne of the Mannish Kingdom in the North. A daughter and a son. I imagine they would have liked to come along, but Bard must leave them in Dale, in case something should happen to him while he visits Erebor.”

“What could happen to him?”

Thorin sighed. By this point, his fidgeting had stopped, and he had crouched down to lean back on his haunches before Bilbo’s chair.

He wet his lips with his tongue, and blinked rapidly: once– twice– with his eyes fixed upon Bilbo’s knees.

“It’s standard practice,” he said after a moment. “You should only trust allies so far with your heirs. I do the same thing. Fili and I rarely leave the Mountain for the same place, these days.”

Bilbo brought his hands together under the borrowed mantle.

“You didn’t like it when Bard joked about hostages,” he suggested, guessing at a connection. Thorin and Bard had not been entirely easy in each other’s presence, for whatever reason.

Bilbo watched then as Thorin went through the same song and dance of hesitation: the nibbling of his lips, the blinking, the avoided gaze.

“No, I didn’t like it,” he agreed, and he looked at Bilbo, then, with such a burgeoning frankness that it was almost frightening.

“Thorin.” Bilbo paused, intimidated by how he was about to take advantage of that frankness. “Why were things were so strained with King Bard? Do you suspect that my accident was not a mistake? Is he untrustworthy?”

Immediately, Thorin shook his head and laid a comforting hand upon Bilbo’s arm; this lack of hesitation was a great relief.

“No. No, Bilbo, I trust the men's word. Any antagonism between Bard and myself is… more personal than political, at this point. And relations between the Mountain and Dale are better now than they were even when the dragon came, at the height of prosperity in the North. That’s mostly thanks to you.” Thorin smiled, though it was a little rueful. “There are days I think you are the only reason the men will treat with us at all. So no, I cannot imagine any in Dale would have targeted you — or that they could have rigged such a precise trap, while leaving no trace. Bard certainly wouldn’t have let the curs get away with it, if anyone had.”

When Bilbo did not reply right away, Thorin tried again. “Our intelligencers have already looked into it, themselves, but I can tell them to investigate again–”

“No, no.” Bilbo nudged his mouth to the side. “Only. You did say something about careless workers, when I first awoke. You seemed very ready to assign blame.”

Thorin took a deep breath — silently enough that Bilbo did not hear it so much as observe it in the movement of Thorin’s shoulders. The King looked down at the hand that was laid upon Bilbo’s arm, and his gaze went far away, as if he was remembering his own anger that day, just like Bilbo was.

“I don’t have the words to describe what it was like.” Thorin said this with an incredible tautness, as if nothing about his body could move save his lips. “To hear the wood giving way. And then to turn around and see you nowhere.”

So he was not remembering the moment Bilbo woke up, at all. He was recalling the moment that Bilbo fell.

Well, of course he is! Bilbo took himself to task, within the privacy of his own mind. The memory of the fall would be a terrible burden to bear, one that Bilbo had been spared.

“I don’t–” Thorin swallowed audibly before continuing: slowly, carefully. “The whole– My whole memory of it is filled with nothing. Like you had vanished, and all the air had gone, too, and all my thoughts alongside. I did not see it happen, and so when I picture that instant, even seeing exactly where you weren’t, it is still as if it isn’t real. And that makes it too easy to picture how it could have gone differently. We all walked over that scaffolding — and for the boards to break under you, the lightest of us all! It need not have happened. It should not have happened. If I had walked behind you rather than ahead, if I had kept hold of your arm, if I had turned faster to catch you, if I had said we had no time that day to check in on the library…”

When the King did not — could not — continue, Bilbo covered up Thorin’s hand with his own. “Oh, Thorin, if it was a library, there would have been no keeping me away.”

It was such a paltry attempt at comfort, such a pale little snowdrop of a joke blossoming too soon… but it was all Bilbo had. He squeezed hard at Thorin’s hand, hard enough to force it to turn within his grasp and make it clasp with his own.

“Thorin,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Thorin laughed at that, but the sound of it was utter misery.

“I know it!” he said, and he swayed a bit, where he was still balanced on his heels before the armchair. He raised the hand that was not clutching Bilbo’s to rub a bit at his forehead, before lowering his arm to rest that elbow upon Bilbo’s knee.

“That’s the worst of it, to my mind; I know it is no one’s fault. I have been–” Thorin held his breath for a moment. “…speaking, to Balin and Dwalin, of what happened and my reaction to it. And they’ve said it one thousand times over, until I have been forced to believe it myself: this is not my fault, nor yours, nor Bard’s, nor Yorick’s, nor Balin’s, nor Dis’, nor any person who had any hand in that day in Dale. It was chance.”

Thorin’s jaw tightened enough to make his mouth pucker, just slightly, and his chin tilted to the left, as if he could not face what he was about to say head-on. If Bilbo was not mistaken, it was one of his own hobbitish mannerisms, translated into something new upon Thorin’s dwarven face.

“But it is a wretched, unbearable thing,” the King said tightly, “to have someone dear to you, taken by nothing but chance. You had been still for hours, and I thought it likely you would die. So yes, at the beginning, I was overcome with thoughts of anger and retribution. It could not possibly have been random. It had to have been the workers. It had to have been lax oversight. There must have been a reason I was forced to bear this loss, some enemy eager to spite me or some sin I had committed, that made me deserve such a blow.

“That kind of thinking is tempting; I’ve felt it before, after the fall of Erebor, and in my– my goldsickness. But it is a selfish frame of mind, and I have found it’ll mire you in doubt more than it will lead you to the truth. Bilbo, truly, I see now that it was an accident. I’m sorry I raised any doubts. Or raised your hopes,” Thorin added at the end, clearly testing how Bilbo felt about the idea that there was no culprit to blame.

Bilbo shook his head, dismissing Thorin’s apology as unneeded.

For his part, Bilbo had always assumed the fall was naught but bad luck. At first, this was because he’d still thought himself an insignificant sort of person. If the universe wound up doing him harm, it would be through simple misfortune, as in the case of the illness that took both his parents in the same otherwise-unremarkable year. And even now — when he knew, as Consort, that his worldly status had been raised more than a little — he hadn’t ever thought the accident an act of sabotage.

But Bilbo could indeed see the temptation in attributing malice to the act. Or, if not malice, then at least intention and meaning. It would be of great comfort to think it had all happened for a reason, that it would all lead to some greater purpose. Now that he thought on it, it was hard to accept that it had been chance. No metaphor or poetry to it at all, as Ori had been searching for; just dumb, unspeaking, unspeakable luck.

Bilbo’s eyelids felt heavier with weariness than ever, and so he let his gaze descend pointedly towards his knees. Thorin’s elbow was still balanced there, a pleasant weight perfectly positioned as if through long habit.

When Thorin saw where Bilbo was looking, he lifted his elbow up right away.

“I didn’t realize that the entirety of this visit would be so tiring,” said the King, easing back into a neutral topic and back onto his heels. He sounded abruptly determined to put his emotions away. “I will keep that in mind. I meant what I said earlier; you should not have to take on the Consort’s duties before you’re ready.”

Bilbo felt some degree of dread at the idea of taking on any of the Consort’s duties, at all. Today had been… a mixed bag, as it were. He had to admit that it was great fun to feel powerful, and important, and admired. But it had not been effortless. The thought of doing this sort of thing — day in, day out — had his exhaustion unfurling itself before him, until it looked to be a sort of permanent state.

“Well,” he sighed. “Sometimes unpleasantness can’t be avoided.”

“Still.” Thorin huffed a little as he stood back up. “I know better now. May I help you back to bed?”

Bilbo was drowsy enough by now that he felt only dimly giddy at the double entendre — oh, to be wide awake, and fully recovered, and in total control of his memory, so as to make the most of Thorin Oakenshield helping him to bed!

He simply nodded and held out his arms so that Thorin could help lever him to his feet. Once standing, Thorin resituated the great fur over Bilbo’s shoulders and offered Bilbo his elbow — the one that had made such a homey perch upon Bilbo’s knee — and they made their way gradually down the hallway to Bilbo’s little closet of a sickroom.

As Bilbo’s person was thus rearranged, and as he and Thorin began walking to the sickroom, Bilbo wished he was still settled silently in the armchair: both because he really was very tired, enough to make any movement quite difficult, and because he knew he probably ought to have just sat there and heard Thorin out while he had the chance. He owed it to Thorin, to hear about his grievance with Bard, and about the Battle… about the dragon, even, since Bilbo had indeed asked to hear tell of his burglary from Smaug, right before the menfolk had been admitted into his sitting room! He should’ve let Thorin say his piece and have done with it: the same opportunity he had allowed Yorick.

But perhaps that is the problem, Bilbo thought. ‘Have done with it.’ As if they could ever really be finished with the business of Erebor, or of the Forgetting.

He rubbed the hand that was not clutching Thorin’s elbow over his own forehead, smearing the sweat there and not doing much to calm his headache. He had imagined the story of stealing from Smaug would be a simple one; much simpler than the Company’s very involved tale of the quest for the Mountain, at the very least!

But after sitting in that room with Thorin and Balin and Bard and Tilda and Yorick — after all the politicking and circle-speaking and suggestions of disparagement! — Bilbo was very tired. He was very tired and very certain that learning more would not make the story of his coming to be in this place any easier to unravel, nor would it make the work of managing all these people any less complicated.

There was simply too much he could not immediately grasp about his life here, and learning more about it intimidated him in the extreme. From what he had gathered, the Bilbo-that-was had at least been getting along all right as Consort, before he had Forgotten. But what had changed in him, over the course of the quest, to allow for such success? Bilbo hadn’t been popular in the Shire for decades, now. How had he achieved such a thing in Erebor?

Ugh, but that thought had him feeling both sick and ridiculous. By the moon and stars! To even begin to liken serving as a foreign head of state to ‘being popular in the Shire’ felt so childish Bilbo wished he could scrub the comparison from the very surface of his mind.

The journey to the sickroom was taking an age, even though they were only going next door. This was because Bilbo could only manage tiny steps, and his halting gait was not made easier by his hunched posture, since the rest of Bilbo’s body seemed not to have gotten the message about the need to inch along slowly. He found himself leaning forward as far as possible — both relying on and straining against Thorin’s support — as if that would help him get back into bed that much more quickly.

But at last, they arrived. Thorin plucked his mantle from Bilbo’s shoulders and tossed it heavily onto the visitor’s chair; he next eased Bilbo out of his jacket, which he draped much more carefully over his forearm.

“Trousers,” he reminded quickly, before Bilbo could even sit upon the bed.

Bilbo took barely an instant to weigh comfort against modesty — Thorin was standing right there! — before he was unfastening his placket and pushing his trousers to the floor. He knew he had made the right choice, though, when it felt so wonderful to shove his legs under the covers wearing only his shirtsleeves and smalls. The velvet trousers would have been cumbersome and irritating, and now they were folded up neatly on top of his jacket on Thorin’s arm.

“You did very well today,” Thorin told him.

Bilbo grumbled and bullied his pillow into the proper shape. “Condescending,” he muttered into it when he had it situated to his liking, underneath his cheek.

“Truthful.” Thorin countered. “Thank you for being there with me. You’re a better monarch than I am, in many ways.”

Bilbo snorted, but then he felt a flash of regret.

“Thorin,” he said, and the name was so muzzy in his mouth that it sounded more like one syllable than two. “‘m sorry.”

Thorin hummed. “Why are you sorry?” he asked, and Bilbo felt his own hand being eased out from where he had jammed it under the pillow. Thorin cradled his palm with much more care than Bilbo had been affording it, when he had it crumpled up somewhere beneath his head.

“I do want to hear what you have to say. About Bard, and Smaug, and all.” Bilbo gave one last valiant burst of effort to keep his eyes open long enough to meet Thorin’s… but then they were sliding shut again. “I wanna listen to you.”

“But you’re tired,” Thorin surmised. He sounded amused.

“Yes,” Bilbo agreed mournfully. “And I’m putting you off!”

And then he thought: there’s a double meaning in that. He devoted a few bleary, meandering thoughts to the way he was surely putting Thorin off, delaying his tale, all while being terribly off-putting, too. Disingenuous. Undwarven.

“You aren’t putting me off.” The tone of Thorin’s voice was very reassuring, but it was dipping lower and lower, quieter and quieter. Harder to hear.

Something rough brushed against Bilbo’s hand, and– oh, it was the graze of Thorin’s moustache, creating friction as his lips pressed a kiss to Bilbo’s skin! Bilbo’s heartbeat skipped, or perhaps it might be better said that his heartbeat staggered: like someone half-asleep navigating a hallway in the dark. Covering up a yawn. Looking forward to being back underneath their warm comforter.

“Sleep,” said Thorin. He laid Bilbo’s hand back upon the bed, and with that sensation gone, Bilbo concentrated instead on Thorin’s voice. Lower and lower, quieter and quieter. “I’ll have a hot bath ready for you when you wake. Would you like that? Set up by the fire… fetch some of that… you like…”

Maybe Thorin’s voice was not really getting any quieter; perhaps it was just that Bilbo’s exhaustion was growing ever louder. In any case, soon he could hear nothing at all.

And so off he went to sleep.

Chapter Text

After that, things changed.

Only members of the Company stopped by to visit him, these days —

(and the remaking of their visitation contract had actually been great fun, indeed!

All had gathered in Bilbo’s parlor to hash out the new schedule. The overall effect was much closer to “house party” than “legal negotiation,” but that suited Bilbo perfectly fine. The dwarves brought with them an absolute feast, and the spread was set up on various carts and tables repurposed from elsewhere in the Infirmary. Bilbo was well entertained with sampling each dish as the Company bartered the ins-and-outs of their new contract in little clusters throughout the room.

Yinka stopped by to say hello to Bilbo, and to try the dumplings and salads and stews and flatbreads and leavened breads and sweetbreads and sweetmeats and puddings and pies and tarts and jams and dips and cheeses and things Bilbo didn’t yet have a name for… and so did Verthandi, Dis, and Gimli.

“We’re here to say good-bye for the time being,” Dis said, gesturing to Verthandi — who looked perfectly serene — and to Gimli — who seemed a curious mixture of puffed-up and high-strung, to be grouped together with the Princess and Bilbo’s apprentice.

“You were too sweet to say we were wearing on you,” Verthandi agreed, offering up both a wink and another plate of pastries, which she added to the table next to Bilbo’s armchair. “And we figured that, as your newest acquaintances, we’re the ones you can most do without.”

“We’re the only ones who weren’t actually in the first contract, more like,” Dis laughed. “We have no leg to stand on, trying to get in this time around! And Thorin has decreed there shall be absolutely no piggy-backing on others’ visits.” Her voice went lower here, and it made Bilbo smile to imagine Thorin pronouncing, very gravely, the word piggy-backing.

“You won’t forget us, will you, your Majesty?” Gimli fretted.

Bilbo blinked and pressed his lips together at the mention of more forgetting, but he hardly had time to feel off-kilter.

“Gimli!” Verthandi rolled her eyes.

“You should hope Balin didn’t hear that," sighed Dis, "or he’ll have you writing lines about tact for weeks. Try to think before you speak, son of Gloin.”

Gimli’s face went so red it clashed with his beard. “Sorry! Sorry, Master Bilbo. Ach. Sorry. I didn’t mean it, Auntie– your Highness, I mean. Come now, I said I was sorry…!”

The food and cheer, however, made this off-handed statement easy enough to put in perspective, and besides: Bilbo was soon entirely absorbed in watching Thorin move about the room and between the knots of dwarves, reminding the Company of Bilbo’s stipulations and quashing any attempts to push against them.

The King was undeniably devoted to his task; single-minded about it, in fact. But his shoulders were relaxed and his face was shockingly mobile, moving quickly between smiles and pursed lips and playful glares as he spoke with his dwarves. Here was a caring, cajoling Thorin: not the carping Leader of the Company Bilbo knew well from the road to Erebor.

And so Bilbo was content to watch the negotiations unfold, secure in the knowledge that his cause would be championed to the utmost. The whole affair placed Bilbo in the enviable position of being the center of attention without the need to perform or entertain, and he was pleased with the ultimate contract, too: the Company would abide by a two-week rotation, with no more than one caller per day for no more than two hours at a time, and with one guaranteed day of complete solitude for Bilbo, per cycle. There were even provisions allowing Bilbo to turn visitors away at the door, whenever he wished — though Bilbo anticipated he’d be hard-pressed to do so, feeling quite rosy in his affections towards the dwarves, at the moment.

All in all, it was one of the most successful parties Bilbo had ever attended, and it was certainly the best that he could remember hosting himself. He felt entirely repaid for the raiding of his pantry, that first night in Bag End.)

— and so it was that Bilbo came to entertain no more than one of his dwarves on any given afternoon.

…But this number soon grew to two a day, if Thorin happened to have time to call. And he did, often: at first only for a moment, to wave from the doorway and set sight on Bilbo’s condition. But gradually his visits lasted longer and longer, once Bilbo intimated that he did not mind hosting two visitors, if Thorin was one of them.

These visits with Thorin were pleasant, if slightly vacuous, since the two of them talked a great deal about nothing much. Namely: the weather; general topics relating to Erebor’s history, geography, and culture; various types of tasty food Bilbo might now consider requesting from the kitchens; light and amusing stories from Thorin’s work as King; light and amusing stories from Bilbo’s childhood in the Shire; and nothing at all to do with Thorin’s childhood, Bilbo’s adulthood, or the Company’s much-storied quest for the very Mountain within which they sat, right that very moment.

It must be said that Bilbo rather delighted in Thorin’s willingness to speak, these days, as compared to his sullenness on the road. And even when they were not of a mood to make conversation, Thorin still brought a spate of kingly paperwork to Bilbo’s sitting room and there they would read together — separately, but still in each other’s company — since Bilbo’s eyesight had recovered enough to allow him to study a book when he was well-rested and when he had access to bright, even light.

And so, the current state of affairs was… good. Unexpectedly, and perhaps eerily, good.

It reminded Bilbo of what courting looked like in the Shire, once the process had drawn close to a marriage. The initial stages of wooing were usually undertaken out of doors: walks together through field or forest, dances at parties, picnics amongst mutual friends, a roll or two in the proverbial (or literal) hay.

But after that — after the couple had made sense of these basic and baser aspects of compatibility — they would take their romance indoors, to be carried out through social calls observed by watchful parents and siblings. And there you might speak of lesser things than what you had discussed under the sun and stars, as you playacted a married life, sitting before the fire with your family listening in.

That was how you discovered if you could make a life together, if you could stand the nearness of such a connection under the weight of the social expectations that accompanied it. Bilbo, of course, had never undergone such a thing. Not in such a way that he could remember, at least.

But this, he was enjoying: soaking up both Thorin’s untroubled company and his lovely, insubstantial conversation. It was a pleasant counterbalance to the intense, embodied affection Bilbo felt whenever Thorin was close.

Each time he laid eyes upon Thorin, Bilbo’s body would positively flush with joy. It seemed all of his muscles, each of his nerves, every drop of his blood — they all remembered Thorin and shuddered in bliss at the sight of him.

That meant Bilbo’s mind was the only part of him left in confusion, though not entirely unmoved.

But such a living situation — confined to two rooms and savoring Thorin and his Company’s only-occasional presence — could not last forever, because Bilbo was healing, and healing well. He could now easily walk between his sickroom and his parlor. He could attend to his own toilette, lift and pour a teapot for visitors, and stay awake the whole day long, if needed. His headaches had diminished until he could trust them as warnings that he really was pushing himself too hard; they no longer interrupted easy, everyday tasks.

It had taken a little over a month and a fortnight, but he was mostly well again. And so this meant that it was time for Bilbo to leave the Infirmary.

Bofur was the first to bring it up.

“It’s high time you decided where you want to go next,” he said to Bilbo one morning. “Oin doesn’t need to keep you, and you should probably send Yinka back home to Dale.”

Bilbo settled back into his seat. He had just finished arranging the little egg tarts Bofur had brought him on a side table set up between their two armchairs; after the success of both the curry and the contract party, the dwarves always made sure to bring a new treat to offer Bilbo on each visit. It was wonderfully effective bribery, as it made Bilbo much more eager to welcome his visitors and very agreeable to their conversation.

(In truth, Bilbo was only just now realizing how much attention he had been expending, over the course of his recovery, on ignoring how hungry he was.)

“Very well,” Bilbo said, because it was true that Yinka deserved to get back to her everyday life, and it was probably for the best that Bilbo get back to his own routine, too — whatever that was. “Where are you all sticking me, then?”

“Aye, that’s the question,” mused Bofur. “There’s the royal suite of apartments, of course. You can go back to your own home, your own bedroom — your own privacy. The apartments are where you’ve been living since they were completed about a year back.”

“Only a year!”

“Well, we have been rebuilding the whole Mountain. Renovating a love-nest for the two of you wasn’t first priority!” Bofur smiled and shrugged. “More like sixth, maybe. Or seventh.”

“That’s still pretty high. Or are you teasing me?”

Bofur laughed.

“Both, Bilbo. It’s always both.” Then he shook his head. “No, folks did make a priority of you because they wanted to make up for the poor lodgings you had during the rebuilding, and to help fashion a life for you here, to help you stay, keep you happy… and because your home was an exciting commission, too, in fairness! Even if you don’t want to live there, we should show you around. It’s worth seeing. But in that case, we’d set you up with some guest quarters away from the royal residence and get you settled. Those would suit grand, too! And we’d make sure you had your own kitchen, and we’d bring all your books to you there, as well.”

Bilbo nodded in an unhurried fashion, to show he was only considering.

“Either way.” Bofur said significantly. “We’d all be happy, either way.”

And Bilbo realized, with a touch of surprise, that he believed Bofur. The Company would be happy either way, and by sending Bofur as emissary, they were trying to prove it.

Bofur was clearly Bilbo’s dearest friend in Erebor. He was second in the dwarves’ new rotation, right after Thorin, and he was by far the most comfortable with Bilbo when navigating his current state of Forgetting.

He was of no relation to Thorin, either. Bilbo had been expecting Oin to come and ask about being discharged from the Infirmary, but he — and Gloin, and Fili, Kili, Dwalin, and Balin: they were all Thorin’s kin, and sending any of them to ask Bilbo where he wished to live might have been seen as an effort to pressure Bilbo into returning to Thorin.

And so Bilbo knew the dwarves well enough by now to recognize they were trying to speak his language, here — that they were trying to be subtle, delicate: to be hobbitish. No one wanted to sway Bilbo one way or the other, and Bofur really would listen to him. The Company would value Bilbo’s decision more than they would ever be ruled by Thorin’s preferences.

…None of this, however, meant that Bilbo was opposed to returning to the royal apartments.

In fact, his skin prickled all over, tantalizingly, at the thought of living with Thorin — at the thought of living with Thorin again, since he had done so already, he supposed, at one point.

And it would probably be good for his memory, after all! To return somewhere familiar, somewhere he had called home, even if only for a year.

“Let’s plan on the royal apartments, shall we?” Bilbo said to Bofur, reaching for one of the egg tarts. He settled it into his palm, and then grabbed up another two in his other hand for good measure. “Would you tell Thorin? He surely knows the place better than anyone — ha! — and would be the best choice to give me my first tour, don’t you think?”

Bilbo thought that would be the end of it, on the subject of going home. But Thorin came to call that same afternoon.

When he arrived, he was looking wan and shifty again. It was a countenance that Bilbo had come to associate with Thorin’s first learning of the Forgetting, and then later when he had tried to explain their marriage. It was, in other words, the ashen aspect of a fellow wrestling with terrible news.

Bilbo almost grumbled What on earth is it now? at the sight of such an expression back on Thorin’s face. But that question was tinged with affectionate exasperation, even within Bilbo’s mind, and so it was this affection that halted the question on Bilbo’s tongue.

“Come, come and sit down!” he said instead. He made his voice very hearty, to try and bolster Thorin for whatever he was about to reveal. “Can I send for tea? A snack?”

Thorin shook his head. “I would speak with you alone.” By this, Bilbo understood Thorin to mean he did not want to risk the interruption of Oin, or Yinka, or any of the Infirmary staff, bringing in refreshments unannounced. “Perhaps afterwards, if you’re so inclined.”

Bilbo acceded, and so both he and Thorin sat down.

“Is this about my returning to the royal apartments?” Bilbo guessed. When Thorin nodded — stiffly, to match his rigid posture in the armchair, one hand clawed upon each of his knees — Bilbo continued, “You know, I completely understand if the idea of having me back is uncomfortable, or problematic. It’s not as if I have to live there, yet or ever! Bofur said that there were also guest quarters available. I’m sure I would be quite as happy with those, too.”

This time when Thorin shook his head, he brought up a hand to rub down his face and over his beard.

“It is not a matter of my preferences,” he said. “I would be happy to have you returned to our home. Beyond happy. But there are things you should know, before you consent to– live with me.”

Bilbo smiled expectantly. When Thorin said nothing, he prompted, “Well, I’m all ears!”

There was another long pause.

“When King Bard came up from Dale,” Thorin started, afterward, “you recall that you asked me to tell you about the dragon, and about what you had been hired to steal from its hoard.”

“Indeed, I do recall,” Bilbo agreed.

“Before the dragon came,” Thorin said, “and at the height of dwarven rule in Erebor, there was found a stone.”

As Thorin spoke, his solemn and steady voice reminded Bilbo of Ori recounting the life of Durin. These words here, out of Thorin’s mouth, were also well-tread, premeditated.

“It was mined from the earth in the reign of my grandfather, and it was a beautiful stone, the most beautiful found in an age. We called it the Heart of the Mountain, the King’s Jewel, the Arkenstone; it was taken as a sign that Thror’s rule, and his lineage, was blessed. But when the dragon came, Erebor was lost and the Arkenstone with it. The fact that Thror could keep safe neither the Mountain nor its heart led many a Dwarflord to claim the line of the Longbeards was no longer favored, by Mahal.

“My hope,” Thorin continued, “in setting out from the West, was to find the Arkenstone– and for you, the Company’s Burglar, to retrieve it for me. And we would take it, and use it to rally all dwarven armies to my cause. To prove that the Maker once again, and had always, favored my claim to the throne of Erebor. Then, all dwarrowdom might have returned for the dragon and rousted him from the Mountain.”

At this point, Bilbo felt cold through his chest and hot across his forehead. It seemed curious, to say the least, that neither Gandalf nor anyone in the Company had ever mentioned the Arkenstone, in the time Bilbo could remember — never mentioned that Bilbo’s thieving would be responsible for proving Thorin’s right to rule! It was either a glaring oversight or an act of extreme trust, that they should assume him capable of the task.

Bilbo had seen jewels before — jools, as they were called and often spelled in the Shire. Faceted crystal, amber, paste-and-glass: none larger than the iris of an eye (though something called “the Heart of the Mountain” would doubtlessly be more impressive). Bilbo had even noticed the stately gems and stones that the dwarves wore upon their persons; how could he not? Those were not jools. They were somehow both more magnificent and more subtle than anything a hobbit could purchase in the Shire. He could tell they were the height of glamour.

To think that Bilbo Baggins, who had never pilfered anything more precious than a pie from his mother’s windowsill, would be entrusted to find and spirit away some special, royal treasure?

“And did I find it?” he couldn’t help asking.

“You did,” Thorin affirmed, but he didn’t look happy about it.

Bilbo, who had wanted to ask what the Arkenstone looked like, shut his mouth.

Thorin said, “We entered the Mountain. The dragon awoke and descended upon Laketown. It was felled by King Bard and his black arrow.”

(And at this, Bilbo marveled that it had taken the Company weeks to tell the tale of the quest, and they had only gotten as far as the Misty Mountains. Now, here was Thorin getting to the climax of the whole story, and it was over and done with in three sentences!

But Bilbo knew this was no moment to interrupt.)

“We — the Company — remained inside the Mountain.” The King, who had been speaking in the manner of one who has had his jaw wired shut, here drew in a shuddering breath. “It was then that I– I became affected by the gold. There was much of it, a massive hoard concentrated first by my grandfather and then added to by the dragon, Smaug. The sight of it–”

Thorin stopped. His eyes flashed to Bilbo’s and then away. When he spoke again, his voice was straining to return to the same measured and practiced tone.

“…It raised in me a sickness that is known amongst my people. It results in a fear of others, known as paranoia, and an attachment to material wealth, which we call an obsessive mania. I fell ill. I do not know why it affected me so deeply, when everyone else was left mostly unscathed.”

“Well, that’s no great mystery,” Bilbo said.

This sentence was out of his mouth before Bilbo had really thought it through, and he regretted his carelessness deeply when Thorin’s expression shifted first into abject misery and then to perfect blankness.

“No!” Bilbo cried quickly. “Sorry, I mean– Oh, Thorin, I only meant that you were under so much pressure. I know next to nothing of dwarven culture, truly, but even I could see that you were carrying everyone’s expectations almost single-handedly. And you just said that everyone thought your family was cursed! I’m sure it was a terrible burden to bear, and so I can understand how it would overwhelm you, in such a time of stress.”

Thorin shook his head with his eyelids lowered, so that Bilbo could only study the trembling of his lashes. “No. It was more than that. The sickness stole away all my wisdom, made me suspicious. And violent. I– accused you of insubordination– I–”

Thorin looked upwards, wildly, beseechingly, and his hand came up again to pass over his mouth and beard. Bilbo observed distantly that the King’s eyes seemed even more lovely when they were dewy with unshed tears.

“I was angry,” Thorin confessed in a cracked voice. “Betrayed. You had found the stone– kept it from me. You tried to barter it for a way out–”

Both the tale and the telling were becoming muddled, but Bilbo was more attuned to the pounding of his own heart and the clutching sensation of compassion in his chest, at the sight of Thorin’s obvious distress.

“Please, Thorin,” he said. “Let’s stop. Talking about this is making you ill.”

“No, we must discuss it!” Thorin tried visibly to master himself, but this only made him look as if he was trying not to retch. His voice was strained and frantic. “We must have it out! I can’t let you live with me, otherwise. It’s not right.”

Bilbo hummed. “All right, then. In that case, why don’t we only take some breaths? Not stopping; just taking a breath for a moment.”

Thorin nodded and closed his eyes, forcing himself to try and breathe evenly. Bilbo wondered if it would be too much of a liberty to take up one of his hands — but then, this whole kerfuffle was only happening in the first place because Bilbo was Thorin’s husband. A bit of hand-holding would surely be allowed.

The little end table between the armchairs, where the egg tarts had sat this morning, was easily moved aside, and Bilbo knelt down next to Thorin’s chair. When his fingers brushed Thorin’s knuckles, the King’s eyes flew open and he made a wounded sound, which Bilbo hushed before grasping his husband’s palm firmly in his own.

Thorin stared down at their hands, and then at Bilbo kneeling there, settled back comfortably over his own furred feet.

“I have wronged you,” Thorin growled — though in a very toothless sort of way, if Bilbo dared say so. “You should not be comforting me.”

“Nonsense,” Bilbo said. “You said I betrayed you!”

Thorin’s face went bloodless again. “No. No, that’s not– Bilbo–”

“No, you’re right; I’m being glib. Please, explain it to me.”

After a few agonized shakes of the head, Thorin said, slowly, “You found the stone in the hoard, and you hid it from me. Because I was sick. I discovered this act of secrecy and overreacted. And I– In my sickness, I threatened you. I threatened your life– I–”

Thorin’s breath quavered. His mouth moved in silence.

“There’s more,” he whispered. “But– I can’t. Please, Bilbo, I can’t. I am sorry for it. With every breath, I’m sorry for it, I promise.”

Bilbo hummed again and stroked a thumb over the back of Thorin’s hand.

The news that Thorin had been moved to anger with Bilbo was no surprise at all, to be honest. It wasn’t that Bilbo thought Thorin inherently fractious or violent! But Thorin had berated Bilbo so often, on the road — with Bilbo snapping back and saying twice worse inside his head — that it seemed clear their personalities were simply incompatible. Bilbo had been so relieved to learn, over the past few weeks, that this was not actually true!

Still, Bilbo wasn’t foolish enough to believe that what Thorin was describing here was the same as all that. At the very least, the stakes seemed different, higher: concerning the divine power of the Arkenstone, and Thorin’s sickness of the mind, and whoever it was that Bilbo had tried to ‘barter’ with. Thorin had surely been within his rights to be very angry, indeed.

But all of that felt very far away, and Thorin clearly felt miserable over it, and Bilbo’s heart ached — and his skin crawled — like the dickens to see him so upset. It seemed as if it would be so much easier to just put the whole thing aside.

So he asked, “Had we… resolved all this?”

Thorin raised his gaze a bit to meet Bilbo’s. “What do you mean?”

“Well, only: did I forgive you? Had I forgiven you? In the past?”

Thorin looked at him, a new calm upon his face. He nodded. “Aye.”

“Then I’m not sure why I couldn’t just forgive again, right now.”

The calm was broken. Thorin’s expression descended again into hopelessness. “Bilbo. You don’t understand. You don’t remember–”

“No, I don’t.” Bilbo said firmly. “I don’t! So it’s like it never happened to me, if you think about it. I'm fine. Maybe we should just take that for the blessing it is.”

Thorin’s eyes closed once more, and Bilbo was startled to realize that the rictus of his expression and the paleness of his skin truly made him appear as one dead. Bilbo had lost many aged relatives, but he had only ever seen the bodies of his parents and his grandfather before they were buried. This buckling of Thorin’s brow — unmoving and unsettling — deeply recalled the look upon Bungo Baggins’ face, before his jaw was bound up and he was taken from his sickbed, to be prepared for the grave.

Two things happened, then. First, Thorin leaned forward in his seat, folding himself almost in half to press his forehead to the back of Bilbo’ hand where it was still grasping his own. His long hair fell forward about his knees, and it brushed against Bilbo’s wrist as nothing had ever done before in Bilbo’s life.

And second, Bilbo realized that he would forgive Thorin for almost anything, now: because he seemed so remorseful, so penitent, and because of the horror that had filled Bilbo at the thought of his husband slain and laid out for burial.

Thorin’s voice shook as he spoke into the warm darkness sheltering their clasped hands. “It is just–” he gasped, “just that I love y– Bilbo– so much–”

The cut-off sound of that love — so close to what Bilbo had never truly let himself wish to hear — made his heart lurch in his chest.

After a moment, Thorin let out a gusty breath over their hands and leaned back, bringing himself upright again. He visibly drew himself together.

“I would like it if you came to live with me. Please.” Thorin said, and it still sounded like a confession of guilt. “It would be the greatest gift to show you our home. I hope you will find it a place you can stay.”

Bilbo brought his other hand to cover up the one he was still clutching over Thorin’s knees.

“I think I will, Thorin!” he said, and he gave their hands a little shake. “And thank you for being willing to share it with me. Now, the Infirmary — I’m excited to leave, I must say! When do you think the apartments would be ready for me? And we discussed tea, earlier; let’s send for that…”

--

And so it came to be that Bilbo found himself discharged from the Infirmary.

On the morning he was to leave, all had been arranged. Thorin arrived with a carriage to take the both of them back to the royal residence, and he’d brought along a Shire-made carpet bag within which Bilbo packed the few belongings he had accrued during his time in the sickroom: his little silver bell, his hand mirror, the changes of soft clothing he had been given. His books were already gone, since someone had always spirited them away once he’d finished reading them, and his wreath from Hanne of Dale and the tea set he had been using in his impromptu sitting room had both been stowed in a crate and sent ahead the day before.

Even though Bilbo was relieved to be released, there was something a bit melancholy about the whole affair: both to be leaving, and to bear witness to how little he would be taking with him.

Bilbo sat now upon the sickbed — which he had made up himself, even knowing that the linens would be stripped right after he left — and he allowed Yinka to complete her final checks over his person. Oin had bowed out gamely earlier in the morning, giving Yinka the final say as to Bilbo’s care. She would be returning to Dale as soon as Bilbo was out of the Infirmary, and so would no longer have the chance to see him every day.

They had already discussed his fatigue (…and lingering shifts of mood… and the fact that none of his lost memories had returned), and Yinka was just completing her examination of his eyesight and reflexes. She turned then towards what remained of his head injury.

“You must relax your shoulders!” she scolded Bilbo with a smile. She pressed down upon said shoulders in a teasing gesture: her fists balled up tight over his collarbone but the downward pressure from them gentle. “You are so tense; you will surely give yourself a headache.”

Bilbo only huffed, but under the watchful eye of both Yinka and Thorin — who was sitting slightly apart, in the visitor’s chair — he obediently tried to shake out his rigid posture.

It was true that his entire upper body felt stiff as stale bread, but the reality was that he was nervous. He was holding himself alert in expectation of the sudden change he was about to experience; he was holding himself alert amidst an awareness that he was about to be spending a lot more time with Thorin.

If Thorin’s visits to the Infirmary had felt like courting, then living together in their shared home would mean truly returning to their marriage. And living constantly in Thorin’s company risked reawakening Thorin’s contempt, refreshing his memory on all that had annoyed him about Bilbo in the first place. The urgent need to avoid that eventuality — and his total uncertainty as to the best way to accomplish such a thing — had Bilbo poised like a prey animal about to bolt.

At least the wound at the side of his head had healed up completely, if not cleanly; it was now a raised, pink caterpillar of a thing several inches above his ear, a long line he could feel with his hands and even see in the mirror if he flattened the hair that was growing back in around it. Yinka’s fingers were moving carefully over the area now, testing for sudden pain or numbness.

“This is a thick scar; I have seen the like with burns. Do not try to shave your head bare, as the razor will do a great deal of damage,” she warned, and evidently she was serious about it!

Bilbo couldn’t imagine himself doing anything of the sort. What an ugly, uncanny creature he would appear, if he shaved himself bald. It was a rare hobbit who lost their hair with age, after all — a trait they seemed to share with dwarves, by the looks of the Company — and shaving his head like Dwalin was certainly not a look Bilbo could ever hope to pull off!

It was like Verthandi’s green hair that way: too rich for Bilbo’s blood.

And he caught sight, too, of Thorin’s look of disgust at the prospect of Bilbo shaving: he looked pinched, like someone had waved a lake-rotten fish right under his nose. That was very dwarven, to be so fussy over someone else’s hair! In this regard, at least, Bilbo could be sure he would not disappoint Thorin, and so he simply had to laugh aloud.

“Well, it looks like the scar has saved us from a bald Bilbo,” he said to Yinka, and then to Thorin: “Cheer up! It’s no use crying over milk that’ll never spill.”

Thorin shook his head a little, but his sour expression did smooth back into a look of begrudging humor.

“I would like to check on your progress in one month,” Yinka told Bilbo, and she also ducked her head towards Thorin, too, including him in her instruction. “I can come back up the Mountain if you wish, but you might also consider coming to visit me in Dale. You would surely be received by the King, as well — King Bard, I mean,” she corrected herself with a smile and another bow towards Thorin. “I know he would make time, and be very pleased to see you.”

Bilbo bunched his mouth to the side, thinking of the promise he’d made to Tilda: that he would meet again with her and her siblings as soon as he was well enough.

“I would like that very much, too,” was what he said to Yinka, “and maybe I will go to Dale. But it’s already going to be such a palaver to get me back to our apartments today. I don’t know if I’ll be up for another such journey in only a month.”

“But of course!” Yinka exclaimed. “I understand entirely. And it can be hard, too — the trauma of going back to a place where you came to such harm.”

…Well. ‘Trauma’ was such a dire word! It seemed neither here nor there, really, Bilbo thought: not when he couldn’t even remember the fall in the first place. Therefore, he had no real excuse to avoid Dale, and he supposed he should buck up and make himself go.

In any case, after that, it was only a matter of shaking Yinka’s hand in both of his own, and thanking her effusively — and then Bilbo was being walked toward the exit.

Bilbo had come to understand, from Oin, that the Infirmary was mostly a ward for people who had taken ill, or fallen injured, on journeys outside the Mountain: a convenient place for triage, or quarantine, or emergency care right as you entered Erebor. But Bilbo’s circuits around his sickroom and parlor had not been wide-ranging, and so he had seen none of the rest of the Infirmary, nor any of its other patients… until today.

There were dwarves peeking out of near every sickroom. They crowded together in doorways, or craned their necks from where they lay in their beds. When Bilbo passed them by, to a very one: they cheered, and clapped, and stomped their feet. Bilbo needed to make himself wave and nod his head in thanks, but in truth, his discomfort was mostly just his own nerves. The happy noise of the dwarves filled his chest with warmth and appreciation, even if he still felt abashed at the hullabaloo.

But: “Do they know?” Bilbo murmured to Thorin, who was walking at his side.

“Not yet,” Thorin said. His voice was heavy, in counterpoint to the elated hollering and applause that faded behind them as they reached the Infirmary’s atrium. “We’ll get you to the royal residence, where you may be assured of peace, and then Balin and his staffers will work their magic.”

Thorin turned to him, then, and straightened Bilbo’s jacket (a fabulous number in mustard-colored silk and of a roomy and comfortable cut) with the proprietary ease of the long-married. But when Thorin saw his hands upon the cross-over tie of the jacket, he dropped them quickly.

“There are crowds outside,” he said, evidently in warning. “They mean well, but they’re eager to see you healthy and they will try to draw close. There are guards who will remind them to keep their distance, and we will walk past them to the carriage, quick as we may. Are you ready?”

Bilbo glanced at the doors making up the front entrance. They were of that curious, doubled-up sort that Bilbo had seen at the front gate of Bree: very large and made of wood, but with a smaller, less ostentatious hinged door cut within the one to the right. Bilbo wondered how the entrance would open: both of the big ones, or just the smaller, more approachable door?

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he promised Thorin.

The King nodded, and this was the signal, apparently, for both of the immense doors to swing open.

Bilbo had not actually pictured what “crowds outside” would mean, but it must be said that he had never seen so many people, all in one place, in his entire life. Even at the Four Farthings Fair, which nearly the entire Shire attended for at least a day or two each summer, folks spread themselves out across the ten-acre field that made up the fairgrounds. The closest image Bilbo could summon to his mind was the jostling crowd that tended to gather once the judging at the “Eats and Treats” tent was over, and the pavilion was about to be opened so that all might come inside and sample the entries.

…Bilbo could not say he enjoyed this feeling of being an Eat or a Treat.

Thorin, though, was as good as his word: his height was a sheltering presence at Bilbo’s back, and he pressed Bilbo on with a grounding hand upon his shoulder. The guards — unarmed, Bilbo did note — held out their hands wide to keep the surging crowds back.

Bilbo focused on walking forward, keeping his face in a pleasant smile, and not flinching when one dwarf or another waved too broadly over a guard’s shoulder. Sooner than he would have thought, Thorin was handing him up into the carriage, and he had just a few moments to appreciate the look of it —

(like everything else in Erebor, it was much more luxurious and well-maintained than anything Bilbo would have found in the Shire: a low-slung, black-painted wooden box with an inside upholstered in tranquil grey velvet)

— before he heard an immense cry of disappointment arise as he disappeared from view.

Bilbo was quite surprised by the pang of hurt he felt, hearing that miserable noise, but then the carriage was speeding forward with a jerk.

“Goodness,” Bilbo said faintly. He pressed his hands down hard into the plush cushion of his bench seat. The quiet now, as they left the Infirmary behind, felt nearly as loud as the crowds had been.

Thorin let out a long sigh from the facing bench. His face was shadowed: half twilit strain, half pale relief.

But: “Painless, no?” was all the King said, and at that, Bilbo did laugh.

Hobbits favored either open-air or covered wagons for ferrying around people and produce, and the jerking, side-to-side motion of such carts, even on the most level of roads, made protracted travel largely unappealing. But this Ereborean carriage was immaculate. Bilbo was shocked (though not surprised, considering the soundness of dwarven craft) to find that the carriage ran so easily over the roads under the Mountain that he barely felt as if he were moving.

In fact, even though he started the journey staring out the window, trying to use the sights of Erebor’s sweeping architecture to settle his racing heart, Bilbo’s seat was so comfortable, their progress along the road so smooth, and the interior of the carriage so soothingly dim, that before he knew it, he was blinking his eyes open and sleepily rubbing his cheek into the cushion.

If his current recumbency was any sign, Bilbo had tipped right onto his side on the bench and spent most of the journey napping. Thorin must have been kind enough to lift Bilbo’s legs up to lay him down flat.

Speaking of Thorin! Bilbo peered over at him, still settled back patiently in his seat. Bilbo got the feeling that the King had been watching him until the hobbit had looked his way — and it was then that Bilbo realized they were no longer moving.

He inhaled sharply through his nose and sat up as quickly as he could, ignoring his swimming head. “Sorry,” he grated out. “Are we– have we been here long?”

“Don’t be sorry,” Thorin said. “You needed your rest; I would not rush you.”

Before Bilbo could grouse about Thorin letting him waste their time by dozing in the carriage like a babe in arms, Thorin was unlatching a waterskin from his belt. “Drink of water?”

Bilbo couldn’t help but laugh. Water was, in fact, exactly what he needed: his sleep-sour mouth was parched, but he hadn’t thought he would get anything to drink until he had found his way into their kitchen, somewhere inside the royal apartments.

“I shouldn’t think a King would need to carry a waterskin around his own kingdom,” Bilbo remarked, voice rasping. “Isn’t that part of why you wanted Erebor back? So you wouldn’t feel as if you were on the road all the time?”

Thorin smiled. “Hush yourself and drink. You sound like you need it.”

And Bilbo made his own smile, and did drink up.

Thorin took the waterskin back when Bilbo was finished and clipped it back to his belt. It was not the exact same skin he had carried on the quest, Bilbo believed, but it was very similar: simple leather, without much filigree or embellishment, which Bilbo had thought might be added on to any and all of the King’s effects.

“I wanted to be prepared,” said Thorin, patting the waterskin. “I won’t lie to you: it’s a trek, to get through our rooms. But now you are well-rested and have refreshed yourself, so I wager you are as prepared as you’re going to be.”

He held out his hand and raised his eyebrows. It was a look containing equal parts challenge and encouragement. It was a much more companionable look, now that the stresses of the great dwarven crowds were behind them, and it made Bilbo’s nose twitch with the urge to rise to the occasion.

“Very well,” he said, and standing, he forced Thorin to move back from the doorway to the carriage so that he could step out. He parroted the words he had heard Thorin call out to the Company more times than Bilbo could count, on the road to Erebor: “Lead on!”

He and Thorin made their way towards the front door of the residence — Bilbo’s single piece of luggage having been left behind for someone else to deal with. Bilbo thought this was a rather entitled sort of thing to do… but then, he was nearly the most ‘titled’ person in the whole Mountain, and he could not imagine Consorts usually carried carpet bags, anyway!

So there wasn’t much to be done about it, and he had to admit that having his hands free made him feel less like a guest, as they walked up the front path.

And upon approach, the view onto the doorway was far less ostentatious than Bilbo had been expecting, if he were being honest! He had not seen much of Erebor during the carriage ride just now, but what he had managed to glimpse suggested a tendency towards great halls, monumental facades, and a general aura of muchness in everything architectural.

But he now found himself in a cavern that opened up wide but hunkered down low, lit up with light flung down from a series of long, horizontal skylights cut through the rock of the ceiling. The light slanted across the space all the way to a carved wooden doorway which looked out over an almost hobbitish stoop — hobbitish in its modest scale, even if its door was square and not round!

And the walkway leading up to all this, the walkway Bilbo was treading now, wound through an unexpected sort of garden: a collection of great stones, each unique, each taller than any dwarf, arranged with a pleasing randomness about the path. They seemed to Bilbo quite obviously uncarved, left as jagged and perforated as they had surely been found, hewn only by wind or water or time. He had never considered natural formations of stone particularly lovely, but these were indeed beautiful.

Before Bilbo knew it, they had made their way through the entirety of the rock garden and were standing upon the threshold. Thorin opened the wooden door. They entered their home.

And Bilbo took a deep breath as he walked inside. It was only that he was so surprised by the way the space yawned out in front of him!

The cavern outside had been low, which he had considered a mere quirk of the Mountain — a minor inconvenience, perhaps, of the location. But now, Bilbo recognized it as deliberate, as design: for the ceiling in this foyer rose up twice as high as the one outside. The vastness of the space was such a breath of fresh air, as it were, that it made Bilbo inhale almost instinctively upon entering.

As he breathed, Bilbo couldn’t help but take in the scent of the place. His home. How odd! He had often noticed, after a long stretch of travel to visit one side or other of his family, that in coming home to Bag End, he would encounter its scent as if for the first time: smelling it for what it was, rather than what he soon got used to it being.

Bilbo’s home in Erebor smelled pleasantly of lemons. Lemons, and something herbal — rosemary, maybe, or juniper. The fragrance hung in the air delicately: nothing so crass or heavy-handed as perfume. It was the scent of a true home.

They did not spend long in the foyer, which Bilbo supposed made sense; a foyer was only a stepping stone into the greater smial, after all. This one was done up fairly simply, by Erebor’s standards, in some sort of creamy white stone patterned within the Mountain’s natural green marble.

He followed along as Thorin pressed them both forward. Bilbo was, however, surprised by the way the King murmured “Brace yourself–” before he brought them out into the next room.

If the entryway had filled Bilbo’s lungs with relief at its high ceilings, this room — a ballroom! A true royal ballroom! — stole that air right back away.

It was enormous! Gargantuan! Huge.

The four walls were all perfectly square and straight, not at all like a hobbit hole, nor like the great cavernous spaces in the Mountain he had glimpsed at the start of the carriage ride. And each wall was lined with huge panels of various polished marble: Ereborean green, yes, but also a marble all in shades of pink coral swirled together, another with splashes of orange rampant on a field of butter yellow, and finally one featuring brilliant blue scrolling over white, like painted porcelain. Bilbo beheld one grand staircase leading down to the dance floor proper, and another across the ballroom — equally splendid — leading back up into what was presumably the rest of the apartments.

All of this rose up under a broad, rectangular skylight made of pearly white glass, suspended over the pale green parquet flooring with pillars of delicate, curving metalwork. The way these pillars were designed lent the illusion that they were dripping down from the heavens, rather than acting as supports for the vast glass ceiling. All in all, the effect was very much like–

“A forest,” he remarked aloud to Thorin, standing beside him at the top of the staircase.

Thorin nodded, and offered his arm for the climb down.

“Is this what Rivendell looks like?” Bilbo asked once they had descended perhaps a third of the way.

He had turned his head to try and assess the view back towards the foyer, and when he whipped his head back around, he noticed Thorin’s startled look and so clarified, “Nori described it for me, in detail. The similarities seem… apparent.”

Thorin sighed. The look upon his face mingled affection and chagrin.

“Watch your feet so you don’t fall,” was what he said, in a bit of a grousing tone. “The room will still be here, once we’re off the steps, and then you can stare all you like.”

Back on the road to Erebor, Thorin would have snapped such a warning at Bilbo with true vitriol; he would have meant it to sting, and stung it surely would have!

But here, in this moment, Bilbo marveled at how ineffectual — and affectionate — Thorin’s words ended up being. His attempt to change the subject was not successful in distracting Bilbo from the elvish splendor of the room, nor did Thorin’s bluster manage to cover up his clear worry that Bilbo really would trip down the stairs, and do himself another injury.

Bilbo smiled to himself and gamely directed his attention down toward his toes.

And of course, Thorin was right: the ballroom, in all its grandeur, was still standing once they had reached the foot of its staircase. Now alighted safely upon the glossy floor, Bilbo tilted his head up and looked his fill as they began to cross the space.

The room seemed even larger, once you were down amongst its willowy columns and under the bright expanse of its skylight ceiling. The ballroom was so spacious that it was really rather more like being outdoors than indoors, which accorded with Bilbo’s impression that it must have been built to evoke a vast forest.

In fact, passing slowly across the floor, Bilbo felt like the protagonist of one of his favorite bedtime stories as a child, which he had cajoled his parents into telling him many, many times. The tale had followed a young dairy maid — who was discontented with her responsibilities in the Shire and hungry for more leisure, finer clothes, and better gossip — as she scorned her agemates and wound up swept away by the faeries.

They lauded and feted the girl through the old Buckland wood, where they kept their faerie court; they danced her round and round under the stars. But they kept going until she felt sick, since they would not feed her, nor let her sleep under their care, no matter how often she asked or how much she begged.

Eventually (after extended description from Bilbo’s parents of the dairy maid’s pitiable hunger and exhaustion), she managed to escape. Upon returning to the Shire — not far from here; right around Hobbiton, actually, Bilbo-my-boy. Isn’t that a funny coincidence! — she discovered herself quite reconciled to her lot in life, and very well-suited to marry the son of the wheat farmer who lived just next door. He made a far better match for her than any of her faerie companions. And together these two built a simple home, and the wheat-farming son made a place for the dairy maid at his table and in his bed, where she found herself perfectly happy.

The first time they’d told him that particular story, Bilbo must have been visibly disturbed, because he remembered both of his parents falling all over themselves trying to reassure him.

Bilbo’s mother let him know that there were no such thing as faeries; the closest you’d find in real life were probably the elves, and they would hardly abduct you, should your paths happen to cross, so there was nothing to fear there.

Bilbo’s father had argued that no, no, that was not at all the lesson worth taking away! The whole point of such a story was to make children wary of marrying outside their station, lest they wind up unsatisfied and making mischief for everyone else. Once you knew the secret message, the moral of the tale, that’s when you saw there was really nothing to be afraid of, in the least.

Belladonna had scoffed with a smile and pulled Bilbo’s knitted blanket up to his chin. “Knowing elves from faeries is worth keeping in your head, darling. Better than any nonsense dictums about sticking to your own sort, which I don’t believe you followed when you married me!”

Bungo had merely sniffed and turned back to Bilbo.

“Now, I told you the moral of the tale sure enough, dear lad, but I never said you had to heed its advice,” he said, as Bilbo lay tucked into his little childhood bed, underneath the spread of stars his mother had painted up on the ceiling just for him. “It’s worth figuring out what the moral of any story is, so you can decide for yourself if it’s rubbish or not.”

Passing through the magnificence of this Ereborean ballroom, Bilbo wondered whether he had learned either of his parents’ lessons very well: married to a King as he was, treating with elves as he did.

His gaze, though, did catch upon something a bit strange on the ground, over in the far righthand corner of the room — almost like a spill of littered paper, cast across a patch of the floor…?

“What is that?” Bilbo pointed towards the clutter.

“It is one of your projects,” Thorin answered immediately. “You’ve told me this is the largest room you have ever lived in; you like to use it to spread out research for your writing, or paperwork from the Court. You had been working on it when– when we went down to Dale.”

Bilbo redirected. “Well, it’s an awfully big room to use just for planning projects, I must say.”

“Aye,” Thorin granted, “but then, it is a social room first and foremost. Dances for the guilds, birthday celebrations for the Company, smaller state dinners… You like to host Bard and his children here in the residence, after all, rather than out in the formal halls near the Throne. When none of that is on, you spread out your maps and notes and things on the floor. It’s been easy enough for you to clear it out, when you learn we will have a formal visit.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows: curious about the project piled up on the ground, despite himself. “And what was the subject matter, this time around, do you know?”

“Negotiating with the menfolk in Dale and Esgaroth. You were trying to get their new goods up into our markets.”

“What, is it a very perilous journey?” Bilbo couldn’t imagine what sort of expertise he’d be able to offer to dwarves on the matter of transporting merchandise up mountain roads!

Thorin let out an amused breath, a distant cousin to a laugh. “No, no. You had been managing the agreement between the southern suppliers, the merchants in Dale, and our guilds for the Customs House. The stock is arriving in Esgaroth, but no one in the Mountain is allowed to buy it yet. Not until an agreement is reached.”

“Oh.” Bilbo scrunched up his mouth so that his lips would not form a surly pout. “But the Lady Tilda said I would soon have my vanilla.”

Thorin threw him a droll sort of look; it said, clearly: You are incorrigible.

“Yes, you will get anything you like out of those people,” said Thorin. “They won’t even make you pay for it, I warrant. But for the rest of us, for the dwarves…” He ground out the word with scorn. “No, it will be more work yet, before those goods are released from all this mannish bureaucracy.”

This time, Bilbo did more than pinch his mouth to the side; he dug his bottom teeth forcefully into his upper lip. Yes, he imagined it would be a long time before he was in a position to help, rather than hinder, those already-stalled negotiations.

“We can have it cleared away,” Thorin said after a moment.

“No, best not, for now.” It was the sort of thing that would behoove Bilbo to study for himself, to see if it dislodged any memories. “Though I did think it was a pile of trash at first!” he continued with a chuff of laughter. “Not that your subjects would allow you to live in squalor. But, well– this room is huge! It must be an absolute bear to dust and clean.”

Thorin shrugged. “You have tackled it twice so far, and you have helpers.”

“I daresay I’m not the one venturing up the pillars to reach all those curlicues at the top!”

“No,” Thorin agreed darkly. “Not before the accident and certainly not now. You have many volunteers from the mines who are happy to lend you their suspension skills for a day or two. You have assisted with the floor scrubbing yourself, though.”

Bilbo snorted. “Generous of me.”

“You do more cleaning than anyone I have ever met, on top of everything else you manage around here! I’ve tried to get you to stop it entirely, but you have told me you enjoy doing at least some of it. It reminds you of Bag End.”

Bilbo sniffed. The whole of Bag End could easily fit inside this ballroom. He was having a hard time picturing how any aspect of this place would remind him of his parents’ smial.

By that point, they had reached the other end of the room, where stood the second grand staircase. They crested it and arrived on a landing which split in two directions.

“Our formal dining hall is that way,” Thorin said of the path to the right. Gesturing to the left, he said, “The receiving rooms and our private residence are both through here.”

“You mean to say that you have to go through this whole place to visit us?” Bilbo cried. He whirled back around to stare at the ballroom, which looked no less imposing from this perspective. “Everyone has to walk through all this? I thought you were taking me the long way round! Is there really no other way?”

“There’s a way to enter and exit our personal apartments quickly enough, aye,” Thorin smiled. “But visitors must come through the ballroom. After all, what’s a bit of intimidation between host and guest?”

And at this, Bilbo barked out a startled laugh, the sound of which seemed to clank around the cavernous space like a bucket dropped down a well — and this strange echo made him laugh even harder.

The two of them proceeded to peer briefly into the formal dining room (which continued the motifs of metal and marble from the ballroom), and then they turned back to walk to the receiving rooms.

“Now, this is all your territory, one might say,” Thorin told him as they began to pass through a large, open door, plated with embellished silver. Thorin had not pulled his arm from Bilbo’s grasp when they reached the top of the stairs, and so Bilbo did not step away either, even though he was no longer in any danger of falling.

“I can’t conduct business from armchairs without looking like a charlatan,” Thorin continued. “I look uncomfortable, and people never buy it. I do better bargaining in forge or tavern.”

“Tavern!” Bilbo squinted a smile over at his husband. “What sort of King makes his deals in a tavern?”

“A King in exile,” Thorin said, but he seemed quick to move on when Bilbo’s face fell. “I am lucky that ours is a kingdom in the midst of reclamation, as there are still plenty of opportunities to work, craft, and argue politics at the same time. So I don’t have to spend too long sitting on my throne, which is nothing more than a giant armchair, in the end. You do some of your best negotiating over tea and comfort, though, and have ironed out some thorny disputes in these very rooms, in fact.”

Bilbo had just begun to recall how Thorin had placed him in an armchair to receive the contingent from Dale, when he was stopped short at the entrance to the first of his receiving rooms.

This space was much smaller, and therefore dimmer, than the ballroom — though the ceiling was still high, and taken up with a white-and-green checkerboard skylight. The walls were all paneled with wood painted a deep, deep red, and it was, all things considered, a lush little space to take visitors: with the much-storied armchairs, a table, and a fireplace.

But all of this was set aside when Bilbo noticed the four large portraits arranged on the wall behind one of the chairs. All four subjects, set each within their own frame, seemed to loom over the sitting area: intimidation, indeed!

Or it would be, if two of the subjects were not–

“My parents!” Bilbo gasped, and broke away from Thorin to rush across the room almost at a run.

The nearer he got, the closer to life the paintings appeared. As was the case with most Shire portraits, both likenesses were taken from the chest up. But that was where the similarities ended, for Bilbo had never seen such vivid painting in his entire life!

Though the portraits struck Bilbo as monumental, as unused to seeing his parents’ faces as he had become, they were perfectly life-sized. The realism was, in fact, completely uncanny. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing someone else in the reflection, rather than your own image! Or maybe it was like peering through a small, rectangular window of perfectly clear glass, to meet the eyes of the person standing just outside.

Bungo sat within the panel to the far left; Belladonna sat in the one next on the right. Bilbo felt the urge to press his hand to the paintings, to see if he could feel the heat of a body on the other side.

“Oh, by the Green Lady,” Bilbo said, and he could hear the shadow of tears in his voice. The sound of it brought him back into his body, where his eyes and throat both felt glowing hot. “It looks like just them! How is this possible?”

“You worked with a number of painters,” Thorin replied. “It took two years. They sketched the likenesses based on your descriptions and on the courting portraits you brought back from the Shire. Those are here in your study; we’ll see them in a moment. And they had your face to work off of, as well, after all.”

Bilbo hummed. It was true that he did look a great deal like his father, though Bungo had the Baggins-typical coloring of dark hair combined with pale eyes. Belladonna would have been more challenging, as Bilbo did not take after her in looks really at all.

But both Bagginses before him were equally true to life. They were so–

They were so–

The sight of the portraits was almost appalling! Well, no — ‘appalling’ suggested that Bilbo was dismayed to see them, which he was not. But the act of looking at them did raise some feeling, stark and enormous, within him that deadened his thoughts and left him quite at the mercy of emotion, only.

Bilbo looked away from his parents. He knew himself well enough to recognize that if he kept studying their faces, he would start ferreting out the ways in which the portraits were not accurate, the ways in which their likenesses were imperfect and disappointing compared to his memories. He was loath to spoil the sight of them by taking such an inventory.

He turned instead to the other two portrait-sitters, whose panels were the same size as Bungo and Belladonna’s.

“My mother and father,” Thorin revealed. “These were completed before the arrival of the dragon. I found them just as they had been hanging on the day of the desolation. Your parents’ were made to match, in scale and format. You like to have them all at your back, so to speak, when you use this room for negotiation.”

Thorin’s mother and father were both lifelike, too, though Bilbo could not accurately judge whether they were good likenesses, having never met them. This meant he felt no compunction studying and cataloging them, though: not in the way he had felt with his own parents.

Thrain — hanging to the left of his wife, just as was true with Bungo — cut an imposing figure, with tattoos scrolling over his nose and brow and with his hair pulled back severely from his forehead. His eyes were the same plummeting black as Dis’, his daughter’s, and they glinted with good humor, though Bilbo could not tell if the viewer of the portrait was necessarily being invited to share in Thrain’s cheer.

Frédris’ expression was cooler, in comparison — not haughty, per se, but certainly regal. She shared Fili’s waving, wheat-colored hair, loose down her back, and her beard fell in a layer of carefully-teased corkscrew curls. The bodice of her ruby red dress was cut low to show off an impressive birthmark on her collarbone: a streak of light brown, scattered over with darker flecks that dashed across her chest like falling stars.

They both looked very striking, very dwarven. If Bilbo had to liken them to anyone in the Company, he supposed that Thrain looked most like Oin, while Frédris looked most like Dori. Neither of them looked much like Thorin at all.

Into the silence, Bilbo tactfully rephrased this realization: “I’m trying to decide who you most resemble!”

Thorin’s face settled into something still.

“I take after my grandfather,” he said, and did not elaborate. He turned away and Bilbo supposed that it was time to leave the sitting room.

The rooms that followed were not familiar to Bilbo — that is, he could not recall ever seeing them before. But they were all recognizably appealing. These were his tastes, his sensibilities of design… It was everything that he loved but had kept himself from bringing into Bag End: either because it would look too scandalous by half, to hobbitish eyes, or because he had been loath to disrupt the décor his parents had so lovingly assembled for their home.

Bungo, after all, had favored the look of polished, unpainted wood; Belladonna had adored lightly-glazed crockery and delicate lace. Bilbo thought both of these understated approaches to interior design were… perfectly fine. So he’d kept almost everything in Bag End as it was, after their deaths.

But here, there was no such restraint, and certainly no doilies nor bare plaster!

There was color everywhere, rich and deep: Ereborean green, peacock blue, mustard yellow, a velvety red straight off a rose petal — all colors found in his favorite rug in Bag End, the one in the parlor with the poppies, the only one he had personally commissioned for his home.

(He wondered if that rug had come with him to Erebor, and if it was somewhere in these apartments, even now.)

The composition of each of the rooms was simpler and sparser than Bilbo would have chosen, but he recalled that the residence wasn’t very old — only a year, Bofur had said. Not enough time, perhaps, to have fully assembled a home. And anyway, Bilbo suspected Thorin’s tastes might reel his in, a bit. Bilbo knew of himself that he was susceptible to knick-knacks and gauds and stuff, with fussiness and particularity and embellishment every which way.

That was not the case, evidently, in the sleek royal apartments.

But what furniture there was, was all constructed of dark wood and upholstered in velvet — which Bilbo had always loved — or else bold brocade in geometric patterns, which Bilbo had never been brave enough to apply to his furnishings in the Shire.

And there was not one single wall wasted! Most of them were elaborately carved green marble, but some were lacquered over in shiny, dense enamel; or adorned with tiny little tiles; or covered with great panels of painted wood — all features Bilbo had never been able to conceive of, til now, but which appealed to him greatly. And on top of that, there were gorgeous tapestries and wondrous framed artworks: more portraits, but also landscapes and still-lifes, again in that foreign, sophisticated, naturalistic style.

And there were plants! Potted plants! Indoors!

No one in the Shire would bring a plant indoors: not when anything that grew would surely be happier outside. Perhaps it was a dwarven practice… though Bilbo doubted it.

“Who has been watering these?” Bilbo cried at last. He had been holding in his curiosity, but now he was spurred into action by the sight of a lemon tree — an entire lemon tree in a fat ceramic pot! — standing guard at the end of a narrow, brightly-lit receiving room.

“I have not touched them,” Thorin was quick to say, from Bilbo’s side.

Bilbo raised his eyebrows. “I’m sensing a story there, your Majesty.”

Thorin sighed as they made their way towards the tree.

“You left me in charge of your plants only once, when you made your return visit to the Shire. And I tried very hard to care for them. You came back to carnage,” Thorin confessed gravely. “I had murdered eight.”

Bilbo gasped, half in mock outrage and half in– well, in real outrage. Eight slaughtered plants! He was still a hobbit, though an odd one, and it would take more than a quest and a Forgetting to leave him insensible to the killing of plants.

“Too much affection?” Bilbo guessed, tipping his fist to mime over-watering.

“Aye. One of them, it must be said, was a gift to you from Thranduil– the Elfking. An unintended victim on my part, I swear.”

“Oh, I’m sure!”

“These days you leave the watering to Nils, our steward, when you don’t have the chance to tend to it yourself. You have given him very complex written instructions, about the plants and those everyday elements of the housekeeping you no longer see to personally. I–”

Thorin breathed deeply. Bilbo glanced over but looked away before he even registered Thorin’s expression; he sensed a surfacing vulnerability he would just as easily escape witnessing, had he his druthers.

“I have been relieved that you’d left instruction, of late,” Thorin continued. “I wouldn’t have– I haven’t been in a place to–”

He paused for a moment, both in speech and in his walking. Bilbo slowed at his husband’s side and devoted his attention to the lemon tree, which they had drawn up next to. He studied the healthy green of the leaves; he thought it likely the plant would flower soon. He was no Gamgee, but he would give this tree a month before it bore buds. Two, at most. Clearly, it was getting enough light and water, even under the Mountain.

When he chanced another look at Thorin, Bilbo found the King was already studying him. His expression was unreadable, though this was nothing new.

Well, no — he supposed it would be new, to Thorin himself. Two months ago, the Bilbo-that-was would have known precisely what to say, to soothe a Thorin Oakenshield who was wearing such a look upon his face.

Bilbo tried for an encouraging smile. Thorin turned to face the doorway and spoke abruptly:

“It was Nils, actually, who helped us achieve the design of the apartments–” and he strode through into the next room, continuing on with his description of Nils’ assistance in choosing colors and fabrics.

As they moved on from the more formal chambers, Bilbo noticed that each successive room became smaller, more intimate —

Save for the library, which was enormous: a long saunter of a room lit by a single skylight that followed all along its length, throwing a sunset-yellow glow over all the rows and rows of bookshelves.

The effect was rather like being down in a deep gully. Every parent in the Shire warned children to stay away from gullies and ravines, lest you find yourself caught up in the rivers at the bottom or unable to escape the high walls of dirt and stone and greenery rising up on either side of you.

But this was doubtlessly the most well-appointed and inviting gully Bilbo had ever encountered, and he would love to be trapped there indefinitely.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Bilbo told Thorin. “Right now, or you’ll never get me out of here. By the moon and stars, Thorin. These are all mine? They’re for me?”

“Well, they aren’t for me, that’s plain,” said Thorin.

Then he laughed, and Bilbo realized that he hadn’t been able to hide, from Thorin, the flicker of pique that had surely crossed his face. No taste for books? he’d thought at Thorin’s words, before the King had laughed. First no care for food, now no taste for books?

“You do read to me, aloud,” Thorin divulged — and with such warmth that Bilbo scolded himself to remember how assumptions were both unhelpful and unkind.

Thorin continued, “And I am happy to be schooled in the pleasures of the written word, when you bring them to me. But here, I have to show you something.”

Bilbo blinked his eyes hard to get rid of the sight of Thorin’s lips forming the word “pleasures,” and followed alongside as Thorin brought him over to one of the nearest, carved-marble bookcases.

The shelf there at eye-level was not full, but was instead ostentatiously devoted to a small selection of slim volumes — perhaps a dozen total — held between two bookends. As Bilbo approached, he counted them: there were four bound up with blue leather, seven in green, and then four more in red. All the blue were titled All Things Wise and Wonderful. All the red were named Perry with Pansy. And all the green were called I Settle the Smial.

“My poetry!” Bilbo cried, recognizing titles of the volumes, even if the binding was un-Shire-like and unfamiliar to him. “It’s been printed here?”

“Aye. Multiple editions each.” And of course Thorin was right, for each of the copies was bound slightly differently, suggesting no two had been released at the same time.

Bilbo had written these three collections of poetry before the quest. They were almost entirely for his own amusement; no one else was very interested in them, though Bilbo had shared a handful of manuscripts with distant bookworm friends in other Farthings, via post. He had tried — back at the beginning, with All Things Wise and Wonderful — to donate an elaborate copy written in his finest calligraphy to the library at the Great Smials, but he’d never gotten so much as a thank you note in return. Message received!

In the end, he’d paid a hobbyist printer in Hobbiton to do up three copies of the books for his own library — not three editions, just three copies: one of each separate book. That had been more than sufficient. But here in Erebor, his collections must be very popular. Popular enough to go through fifteen printings, total... with who knows how many copies in each of those runs!

With a hesitant hand, Bilbo reached out to trail one finger along the tops of the books. But:

“What, seven editions of Perry with Pansy?” he asked incredulously.

That was his least favorite collection among the three that he had penned. He’d been leaning rather hard into a romanticization of the Shire at that point, and as a result, all the poems in Perry with Pansy were maudlin at best and drivel at worst.

Thorin laughed again, broadly, and at Bilbo’s quizzical look, he clarified, “That was your exact reaction before the Forgetting, too. The tastes of my fellow dwarrow struck you as so unrefined! I’m sorry for it, but they love to read about what goings-on of the Shire you cover in that one. They find it very exotic.”

“Exotic! Ha! The Shire, exotic?” Bilbo shook his head at the idea. “Well, good. Someone should find it so.”

As Bilbo and Thorin moved deeper in their apartments, the rooms became not only smaller, but more personal, too. There were fewer rooms for diplomacy and social visits, and more rooms for hobby-work and play.

Bilbo caught glimpses of his study (which housed, as promised, the Shire portraits of his parents — and his poppy-patterned rug!) and his private kitchen, separate from the one designed for the formal catering of state dinners. He spotted his pantry, and a cozy, homey-looking dining room, and a powder room for visiting supper guests. Further on, there were a handful of spare bedchambers and washrooms thrown into the mix. And Bilbo even peered into Thorin’s darkened workshop, complete with a small forge — now cold — and an array of carefully organized hand tools.

As they walked through the apartments, Bilbo felt Thorin’s eyes studying him far more than they were turned toward the surroundings. Thorin was clearly watching for some hint of recognition, some sign that Bilbo remembered their home.

But Bilbo could not perform any such reaction, because he truly could not recall ever laying eyes upon the place.

Yes, it was all beautiful; yes, it was all to his tastes. But any delight he was feeling arose from pure novelty. He felt no kinship with these rooms. No sense of homecoming. And so even as his enchantment with the space grew, he felt a sense of dread creeping up alongside him, as well.

He stared at the paintings, at the carpets, at the books left facedown and untouched upon tea tables and chair arms. He scrutinized the pots and pans, the hand towels, the trinkets, the gewgaws, the remains of a married life– and remembered none of it.

Bilbo was being so attentive, in fact, to the décor around him — peering at each object, trying to pry loose some splinter of recognition — that he was completely walloped by the sudden sight of a bed.

A bed!

…It perhaps should not have surprised him. After all, they had only just poked their heads into a few of the guest bedrooms, over the course of their tour. But Thorin had told him what those rooms were going to be, before they looked in, and they had left all that behind more than a few hallways ago. They were now working their way through Bilbo and Thorin’s personal rooms, their most private rooms, built to be shared by only two.

And so this sudden bed made him gasp, just as he had done when Thorin had disclosed their marriage. But in his own defense, Bilbo thought, it had come out of nowhere!

After all, they could not possibly be in their personal bedchamber yet. And indeed, when Bilbo took his eyes off the stark white of the folded-down comforter, he saw that they had entered an otherwise normal sitting room — done up in a fetching color scheme of blushing carnelian, with two couches, a table where you might play at cards, and a glass-fronted cabinet showcasing one of Belladonna’s tea sets (the pretty one patterned with a tartan design; too delicate to use day-to-day, which made it perfect for display).

There was nothing at all amiss, except for the great big hulking bed lodged between the two sofas!

It was completely out of scale with the space, Bilbo noted to himself with a sniff: placed only just far enough away from the hearth to be safe, and making it nigh impossible to actually sit and use the room for its intended purpose.

When Bilbo stopped stock-still just over the threshold, Thorin sighed. “I had planned to ask Nils to help me set it up later, but I suppose he thought it best to have it brought in now.”

“The bed?” Bilbo asked, and then felt a little foolish. What else could they be talking about?

“Aye. It’s where I’ll sleep, while you recover.”

“Here!” exclaimed Bilbo. “We just passed a quarter-score of spare bedrooms! Why on earth would you sleep here?”

Thorin frowned.

“Our bedchamber is just through there.” He gestured to a door on one side of the fireplace. “I want to be close, should you need anything in the night.”

Bilbo wandered further into the room, though he did not make it very far before his progress was impeded by the massive bedstead.

“You know,” he said, turning himself sideways to try and slide past it. “Oin released me from the Infirmary precisely because he thought I was past the need for round-the-clock care.”

“Just in case,” replied Thorin, lightly. “And I did not think you would appreciate my joining you in our bed, not when you do not remember choosing to marry me.”

Bilbo stumbled, having managed to get himself caught between the side of the headboard and one of the sofas.

Goodness!

He realized all of a sudden that this was what Bofur must have meant when he had stressed “you’ll have your own privacy:”  Thorin would be with him in the royal apartments, but would not share his room.

“I– I’m sorry!” Bilbo leaned a hand upon the mattress to right himself. “I didn’t even think about– I’m keeping you from your own bedroom! Are you sure? Maybe I ought to–”

“I’m sure,” Thorin said with finality. “It’s the best place for you. I will be more than comfortable out here.”

Bilbo kept very still as his husband came up beside him, evidently prepared to help him up again if needed. Not a necessary gesture, but a thoughtful one. Very thoughtful.

All stumbling aside, Thorin’s allusion to– well, to conjugal relations did help Bilbo realize that perhaps his startlement at the sight of the bed was not solely a response to this particular bed clashing with this particular sitting room. The soft texture of the nondescript comforter underneath his hand, and the warmth of Thorin’s body radiating from Bilbo’s right, went further to remind him of what husbands often got up to in beds, and in all sorts of other places.

He felt his face and throat start to blush.

It was not that he had never had sex before. He had, with various partners, on several occasions, in his tweenage youth.

And it was not even the idea of having sex with Thorin! Bilbo had already considered that prospect; obviously, on the road to Erebor, he had considered it many times. Back then, Bilbo had known Thorin would never agree to a tumble, and there was hardly ever enough time, comfort, or privacy for Bilbo to resolve the issue on his own, so to speak. Still. He had thought about it.

But he had tried not to think about it recently. Yes, they were married, they had surely slept together; no, Thorin didn’t think Bilbo owed him any marital duties, he had said so now multiple times. Bilbo got all of that. He understood.

Only, it had not been very long ago at all, that he had felt certain Thorin disliked him so deeply that they would never, ever fall into bed together. This tightly-held conviction made the last seven years a tough turnabout to swallow.

To think: he and Thorin had not only made love before, in the past, but they had probably made love often, and Thorin might privately wish to return to such a state of play where they were making love again, as soon as possible. Which in theory would not be a problem for Bilbo, of course — considering all the time he had wasted sitting in his saddle and fantasizing about that very thing, assuming it to be hopeless. It should send him into elation, this opportunity for congress with Thorin. He should be jumping at the chance right now. He should cry, Blast and confound the notion of separate beds! and start tearing off his own clothes and wrestling with Thorin’s, too.

In fact, Bilbo allowed himself to picture it: Thorin catching up his hands where they might be struggling to undo his own waistcoat, Thorin turning him about where he stood — sitting him down upon this incongruous bed, using his big palms to ease Bilbo’s knees apart, letting his lips tease ever so lightly over Bilbo’s. One of his hands would come up to brush his fingers over Bilbo’s cheek, to direct the tilt of his head just where it was wanted, and his other hand would fall down, heavy, hot, to press against the inside of Bilbo’s knee. Thorin’s hold would take there, implacable, the touch of it so sure of its welcome that no one would ever dare call it ‘polite.’ And so Bilbo could almost feel the way Thorin’s thumb would curve, curl, clutch under his thigh; the way his other fingers would brace and weigh over the muscle of Bilbo’s leg, secure, supportive even as he pinned Bilbo in place.

Strange, how Bilbo’s mind had heaped all that delight — the thrill of Thorin’s touch — upon some nothingness part of Bilbo’s body: not his prick or arse or mouth, but upon that unnamed stretch of skin just above the knee.

He supposed it might have something to do with the speculative and vague nature of such an imagined sensation. After all, he could not remember any bed-business happening between them — even though it, or something very like it, already had. Thorin may as well touch him somewhere meaningless, unthought-upon.

Bilbo felt so odd, all of a sudden. He could sense his perception — of the bed, of the room, of himself — going uncanny, unnatural. His awareness of Thorin’s body next to his felt simultaneously too crisp, too close, yet also far away, as if Bilbo were leaving his very skin behind and feeling nothing at all. It was unbearable. It was of no concern.

The whole matter of the Forgetting was just such a tearing-in-two, Bilbo realized. It was as if his body had somehow managed to send his mind out of the room these last seven years, so that it, the flesh, alone might remain, reveling in Thorin’s company — thoughtless, guileless, nothing but muscle and blood.

Bilbo glanced over at the door beside the fireplace, picturing another version of himself who pulled Thorin along by the hand and who smiled back at Bilbo before they, the body and the King, both disappeared into their bedchamber, leaving him behind.

A queer thought. A queer thought for a queer set of circumstances. Bilbo concentrated on keeping his breathing deep and even, so that Thorin would not know what sort of strangeness was running through his head.

Feeling back in his body, he chanced a look Thorin’s way and found that King was already staring back. And Bilbo had to say: the expression on his face was queer, too! Thorin was smiling, a little, and his eyes were a touch narrowed. It was a searching look, an appraising look — perhaps it was even a knowing look.

“What is it?” Bilbo blurted, a touch panicked at the prospect of having the direction of his thoughts found out.

He watched the tension in Thorin’s jaw go loose and open, under the skin of his cheeks and the bulk of his beard; it lent an even greater degree of contemplation to his expression.

“I wanted to ask you a personal question,” Thorin admitted.

“A personal question!” Bilbo tittered, but then made himself stop. He lifted his hand off the bed, and it flew up to fiddle with his waistcoat buttons. “Well! I don’t think I can allow any personal questions, at the moment – not without a drink in me, I shouldn’t think.”

Thorin hummed, and his eyebrows moved so that his face went both playful and mournful at the same time. “And I can’t let you drink with a head wound.”

Bilbo sniffed. “That excuse is only going to hold for so long. I am very nearly healed, and won’t be going the rest of my life without any alcohol.”

Thorin only gazed at him, a little longer. Just when Bilbo was afraid the King was going to ask whatever it was that had his mouth curled up so coy, Thorin said, “I can show you to your bedchamber, where you’ll have the chance for some rest before supper.”

“Oh, thank you,” Bilbo responded automatically, and — a little dazed — he turned about again to continue squeezing his way past the bed.

They followed Bilbo’s imagined specters of their past selves through the doorway, into their bedroom.

It was lovely, of course, so as to match the rest of the residence. There was a four-poster bed (expected, this time), carved of dark wood and decked about with whispery linen bed curtains, pulled to the side. There were two wardrobes and two vanities, as might be expected of a married couple’s bedroom. A cushioned bench was set up at the footboard. A number of doors headed who-knew-where.

They had spent so long touring the rooms that the daylight was almost gone, but Bilbo noted a ruddy patch of light thrown onto the bench by the circular window in the ceiling. And when he looked up to study the skylight, he gasped.

“Oh!” he cried. “It’s my stars!”

“You remember!” said Thorin, all eagerness.

Bilbo shook his head. “No, my bedroom in Bag End — my childhood bedroom. It had stars upon the ceiling, too.”

Not like this, of course. The bedroom of Bilbo’s youth — cached away in the safe, windowless heart of Bag End — had a ceiling lovingly painted in the simplest shades of blue and yellow, marking out some rudimentary constellations. Here, in Erebor, the bedroom sky was blanketed over with the richest and deepest of indigos, with intricate patterns picked out in stars of glossy white tile: so shiny that they caught the dying light from the window, and from the hearth and lamps, and cast it back, glittering, around the room.

“Your mother painted those stars for you before you were born,” Thorin supplied, of the constellations in Bag End.

Bilbo nodded. It was true, after all.

He wandered deeper into the room, which was large and circular to echo the slight dome of the ceiling. He reached out to stroke the bed curtains, which were as delicate beneath his hands as he had expected; they were stark white to match the whitework quilt upon the bed. This quilt was covered over entirely in scrolling matelassé embroidery, much more elaborate than the one on Thorin’s bed outside.

Bilbo recognized it as hobbitish needlecraft immediately.

“A gift,” Thorin revealed proudly, coming up alongside Bilbo again and spreading the flat of his hand out upon the stitching. “From your aunt, Donnamira.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows and gave Thorin a brief smile — though, truth be told, he doubted the quilt was anything of the kind.

Donnamira Boffin, née Took, had never paid much attention to Bilbo; neither of his mother’s sisters — not Donnamira, and not Mirabella — and certainly none of her many brothers had ever seemed to spare her son a thought, after her passing.

He didn’t blame anyone for it! Bilbo was an easy person to forget about, as he had no family of his own to make visiting him in Hobbiton worthwhile, and he’d never had any interesting gossip to share when he traveled to see his relations in Tuckborough, or the Yale, or Brandy Hall.

All of this meant that he thought it very unlikely the quilt had any connection to Donnamira whatsoever. Bilbo might have said it did, to Thorin, when he first acquired it: maybe to make it seem worthy of use on their marriage bed, or to cover up for Bilbo’s lack of family ties (he had learned on the quest, after all, and was becoming reacquainted now with how important kinship was to dwarves).

But no, this quilt had probably just been bought or commissioned from any old hobbitwife who was specialized in the craft. It was well-made, but Bilbo credited that to his own good taste: he was sure he had bought it himself. There was no way it was really a gift.

His mouth scrunched to the side, and he rubbed at this forehead, which was starting to throb: a sign that he had been on his feet too long, that his excitable emotions were beginning to get the better of him. His eyes were starting to throb, too, and water, as the hurry-scurry of unsatisfied arousal and materialistic delight and coiled suspense from all the livelong day drained from him at once, leaving him feeling scraped hollow.

But crying like a faunt was not a reaction he wished to lean upon, to send Thorin from the room.

“Thorin, I’m sorry, but my head is starting to bother me. I think I would take that rest you mentioned.”

“Of course,” Thorin said. He took a few hasty steps away from Bilbo and the bed. “Should I wake you when the food is prepared?”

Bilbo’s stomach turned at the thought of being interrupted, when he could already feel the beginnings of tears beading up at his eyelashes.

“Oh, that’s all right!” he said brightly. “I’ll come out when I’m ready. Maybe– Would it be possible to get a cold supper set aside for me, do you think? If anyone’s around, or –”

“If you’re sure. It isn’t trouble to come wake you.”

“No, please. I’ll be fine. If I sleep on through, I sleep on through.”

Thorin turned about and left Bilbo alone in the bedroom, in the gloaming dusk.

The lingering warmth of the light was striking a bittersweet sort of chord in Bilbo’s chest, one that didn’t help stem the oncoming slew of tears. Bag End, after all, had glowed golden at all hours of the day; Bilbo could move through the rooms to chase the light. The early, easterly blush of sunrise would always light up his bedroom, and then even at high noon, with the sun at its peak, the front parlor’s window was so large that it bathed the room in daylight. Sunset would mantle his study in saffron every evening, and then it would be nighttime, and he could light all of his sconces to send the smial aglow again.

He wanted to go home and see all of it again, soak in that light once more. He wanted to go home, but couldn’t, because while it might still be standing, that Bag End no longer existed. His parents’ portraits were here, his rug was here, there were stars on the ceiling here. Probably the smial was all shut-up and empty, ready to be passed along to Drogo. Maybe all of his furniture was sold. Whatever remained must be shrouded in dust-cloths.

He was feeling the strangest sensation across his face: like a sparkler was going off just in front of his nose. It was not pleasant. The dancing flashes of light before his eyes and the pinpricks tingling all along his skin made it hard to breathe for whatever reason, and so even though he gasped and gulped, he could not get enough air.

This lasted a long time, until Bilbo was abruptly aware that the daylight was long gone, and the room was rather cold, and he was crouched down on the floor, his head, stomach, knees, and shoulders all aching. And he was tired. He was so tired.

He shook off his jacket, his waistcoat, his trousers. He left them on the ground, wherever they happened to fall, and crawled into the big four-poster bed, shoving himself under the anonymous white quilt: the one he had apparently lied about to his husband.

He closed his eyes. He went to sleep.

--

And then, he woke up. The room was bright again.

Everything was suffused in daylight thrown down from the ceiling: the strong rays of a clear mid-morning. Bilbo’s attention, upon opening his eyes, was drawn definitively towards the window casting the light. The panes of glass in the window were all soldered together to form a sun surrounded by beams of orange and yellow light.

…It was actually very cheerful!

Bilbo had sat himself up, by this point, and shuffled down the length of the bed on his knees, to better see the skylight out from under the canopy above his head. That meant the quilt — which had caused him so much bother yesterday — was pooled, now, about his lap, and amongst the heaps of snowy white, Bilbo’s gaze couldn’t help but snare on a flash of purple thread.

He shook out the fabric enough to find the source in a plum-colored inscription embroidered upon the back of the blanket, running along the top border. Once he had smoothed it out well enough to read, the writing — in an elegant couching stitch tested on many a baby blanket and wedding quilt for gift-giving and glory boxes — said:

With All Love Upon News of Your Marriage + + + Your Aunt Donnamira

He gaped down at the embroidery. He ran his fingers across it.

No goodwife of the Shire would ascribe her name to craft she had not done herself, lest she lay claim to errors or imperfections that had nothing to do with her own handiwork. That meant this blanket really was from Donnamira, his aunt, his mother’s sister. She had made it and given it to him herself. She had learned of his marriage —

(to a dwarf! To a King! How much of any of that had he told her?)

— and had approved, enough to offer him one of the most exquisite examples of whitework quilting he had ever seen.

Bilbo cleared his throat. His emotions still felt fragile, and rather exposed, after the ordeals of last evening, so all he could do was shiver a bit in his big empty bed. Erebor did tend to run a little cold, he conceded to himself, and there he was, sitting about in naught but his shirtsleeves– which, ugh, he had worn all through the day yesterday, and which should really not be coming into contact with these fresh sheets!

He abandoned the bed and the quilt, and — after a moment of glancing between the two wardrobes in the room — he approached the one to his right, which was made of glossy wood the color of caramel and dominated in design by clean, simple lines. When Bilbo opened it, he found a large mirror attached to the back of its single door, and inside, a chest of drawers sitting below a rack of dressing gowns.

The drawers, when Bilbo opened those, were all filled with pairs of drawstring trousers, which was odd. The dressing gowns, though, were all rather nice! Sturdy silk lined with woolen fleece… Bilbo was about to take one off its hanger when a little tray on top of the chest of drawers caught his eye. It contained two rings, both silver: one etched with a crown and seven stars and the other capped with a large embossed rectangle. Bilbo remembered seeing both on a certain dwarf’s hands during the quest for Erebor.

All this was Thorin’s, then.

Bilbo quickly closed the door against the temptation to steal one of Thorin’s lovely large robes, and made for the other wardrobe on the far side of the room. This one was made of dark walnut sinuously carved, with an asymmetry that was unexpected but not unappealing. Bilbo in fact found himself gazing at it for a good long while before he finally pulled the doors open.

And when he saw what was inside, he gasped!

Thorin’s dressing gowns, over in the other wardrobe, had been nice enough — but the ones hanging before Bilbo now were perfect. There were four: his favorite robe from Bag End and then three more clearly inspired by the first, each one particolored and pieced together from cut shapes in many different fabrics.

At random, he chose one of the new robes to pull down; it happened to be mostly blue and yellow, made of tiny little diamond scraps sewn up all in pattern. He had assumed the gown would be stiff in his hands, what with all the many seams holding together the piecework — but it flowed off the hanger as if made of warm water, as if every single one of its little diamonds had only just been longing for the chance to all work together as one garment!

The dressing gown was slung over his shoulders immediately, and as he stuck his arms through the sleeves, Bilbo pulled open the drawers in his wardrobe to look through them. Here he was happy to find dozens of mostly-interchangeable white linen nightshirts (making for much more suitable sleepwear than Thorin’s drawstring trousers, if Bilbo did say so himself).

All these findings were very interesting, but there were no day clothes in either of the wardrobes: not even the soft, leisurely clothing he had been wearing in the Infirmary. He turned his attention to the rest of the room and spotted a stack of folded clothes upon the chair tucked into the nearby vanity.

It was a relief to see proof that he did indeed own at least something that was neither nightshirt nor dressing gown, but he wondered if the steward really laid out his clothes for him each day…?

Still, he walked over and riffled through the stack: a jacket of maroon brocade (patterned in golden thread; to die for!), a satiny shirt the color of cream, and cinnamon-colored trousers.

He shook out the jacket — since he felt a strong and sudden urge to check the pockets — but he was startled by the shower of dust that fell from it. The lapels were blotched unnaturally dark, as well, like they were soaked through with water. The trousers were not in better shape, either, since there was grit ground into the knees and all along the outside of the right thigh. And when he lifted up the shirt to see if that, at least, was salvageable, Bilbo noted blots of uneven brown all down the front.

His stomach turned when he realized that these — and the stains upon the maroon jacket — were surely dried blood. This had surely been the outfit he had worn during his accident, returned to his room so he might decide what to do with it.

He dropped the shirt immediately as his gorge rose and his vision started to swim… but then manners demanded that he stiffen his upper lip, clear his throat, and shuffle all the clothes back into a ramshackle sort of stack.

This was not something that needed dealing with today! One thing at a time! And circumstances always seemed more bearable when one was wearing fresh clothes.

Bilbo set (shoved) the blood-stained suit in his wardrobe (as far back as it would go, completely hidden beneath the fall of his fine new dressing gowns). He hurried back over to his clothes from the night before and stuffed them in there, too, for good measure.

With that over and done with, Bilbo kept up his looking for something to wear, and there was nothing more promising than all the doors. One, he could remember, headed back to the sitting room (and Thorin’s makeshift bedchamber), and another, when he opened it, revealed a washroom, which looked lovely but was not very useful to him at all, for the time-being. But at the third door, he found–

Found–

Well. It might be simplest to say he had found a closet, but that could not encapsulate the way it seemed to contain every single piece of clothing a hobbit could possibly imagine.

Bilbo stared. He blinked.

The place was arranged first by clothing item, then by color, which was the way that Bilbo had kept his clothes organized back in Bag End. But of course, there all of his fabrics had been sensibly muted, and at least partially practical — even taking into account Bilbo’s showiness of dress compared to other hobbit fellows.

Folks in the Shire had long made fun of him, after all, for taking too deep a liking in clothes. That Bilbo, he hardly ever goes out! Hasn’t pitched woo in years! What reason could he have, to try and look so fine? He would overhear things like this when people muttered it to each other in the market, or when it would be told to him secondhand, later, by busybodies who couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Such a wardrobe, and for a gentlehobbit who never throws a party, nor deigns to step out with any Jack, Jill, or Josco? Waste of money!

Waste of a Baggins, really.

But here in Erebor, it seemed each section of his closet comprised some part of a full-spectrum rainbow, ranging from candy apple red and tiger lily orange, all the way to turquoise blue and brilliant orchid purple. And then there were the fabrics! Silks and satins and cashmere and linen and toile and–

Bilbo took a deep breath to try and get his bearings. He then turned to his immediate right. Jackets, he saw: yes, good. Starting with red tones — that made sense, too; beginning of the rainbow and all. But– there were so many reds. Ox-blood and burgundy, yes, and then crimson and vermillion, too. And scarlet. And cerise. In fact, there were two jackets that seemed to be the exact same shade of ruby, only in slightly different grades of silk.

Bilbo had to leave the closet and close the door, quite overwhelmed. At this point, he no longer believed the Bilbo-that-was had others pick out his clothes — but if that had indeed been the case, Bilbo would certainly no longer blame him. In fact, taking that responsibility off his own hands sounded like a wonderful idea.

He found his way out into the sitting room. It was empty, and dimly-lit compared to last night. Before he had left the bedroom, Bilbo had entertained a fleeting trepidation over the prospect of seeing Thorin abed, potentially unclothed–

But the temporary bed, too, was empty and innocently made up, neat as a pin. There was no one about.

Across the room, though, through a tiled archway, there were signs of life: a slant of pale light upon the floor, a faint clattering of dishes. Bilbo made his way over and arrived in a lovely little dining room.

This room, like all the others, had a leadlight ceiling, this one in glass of cloudy white and sage green patterned in a rosette over the round breakfast table. The table bore a large spread of pastries, fruit, and some sort of hot, aromatic drink that Bilbo’s nose recognized even if his mind did not. It was exactly the sort of thing that Bilbo usually favored for first breakfast, though he supposed he should stop being surprised when he found everything precisely to his tastes.

(Though, really, the closet was taking that notion a bit too far!)

Thorin sat at the far side of the table, reviewing a stack of documents through a pair of half-moon spectacles. The sight of these little glasses — which Bilbo had seen before while reading with Thorin in the Infirmary, and which never failed to send a flash of intense endearment through his belly — was still so startling that Bilbo actually brought his hands up to rub at his eyes.

“Good morning,” Thorin said pleasantly, looking up from his papers and smiling over the foodstuffs. “Did you sleep well?”

Bilbo — who had been taken to task by Thorin nearly every morning on the quest, for dilly-dallying in his bedroll (allegedly!) — hesitated over his answer.

“Good morning,” he replied after a moment. “Yes, I was very comfortable. Is there a way to summon the steward?”

“What is it?” Thorin’s posture was always impeccable, but he seemed to straighten even more as he asked this question. “Is there anything you need?”

“Well. It’s the closet.”

“Can I help you find something?” Thorin started to rise from his chair, but Bilbo flapped his hands to halt him.

“I’m afraid that’s just it!” he cried. “I have no idea what’s in there, and I don’t want to say it’s too much, for I am aware that would be very rude and extremely ungrateful. But. But–”

He stammered, and Thorin waited for him to finish. This was considerate, yes, but also frustrating, as it forced Bilbo to articulate exactly what it was he really wanted to say. It figured Thorin would stop interrupting him, as he had done repeatedly on their travels, exactly when Bilbo could use some of that dwarven presumption!

After a moment, Bilbo oriented himself and said, “I would like someone to pick something out for me to wear. Just anything, and I’ll wear it, and I’ll deal with sorting all the rest later.” He cleared his throat. “Which isn’t to say that the closet is disorganized. It looks very tidy.”

Thorin blinked, his right hand still poised over the paper he had just been holding.

“I could choose something,” he said finally.

Bilbo blinked. “Oh– That’s not– I don’t know.”

Thorin stood slowly and removed his spectacles, tucking them into the breast pocket of his fur-lined mantle. “May I?” he asked. “You can send me back for something else if you don’t like what I choose. They are all your clothes, but you prefer some over the others on any given day. I will not be offended if you ask me for something else.”

Bilbo hesitated again.

It was quite an intimate thing, to have someone examine and select your clothing, and this was Thorin, who was King, and therefore surely above anything so lowly as picking out a hobbit’s outfit for the day. Bilbo shuffled his feet and wrapped his dressing gown more tightly around himself, trying to disguise his fidgeting as merely fighting off a chill. Oh, but — he actually was rather cold. That was why he had wanted to get dressed in the first place.

“All right,” he said at last. “If you’d like.”

Thorin beamed. It made Bilbo shiver, and not from any chilliness, this time.

“Have a roll and some chocolate, and I will go select something.” Then Thorin’s expression took on a more familiar sternness. “Do not rush yourself. Dressing can wait.”

Of course, Bilbo did rush himself, but he was also very hungry, so it still took him some time to eat. He helped himself to six or so of the pastries — slices of enriched bread swirled with cinnamon, fried buns filled with jam, and familiar hobbitish turnovers — as well as wedges of melon and spoonfuls of raspberries, alongside a cup of the rich, sweet beverage, which Bilbo assumed was what Thorin meant by ‘chocolate.’

So, even though Bilbo sped through his food, he still found Thorin already waiting for him back in the sitting room — which he seemed to have brought back to brightness by lighting the fire and sconces himself — fussing with what he had chosen out of Bilbo’s clothing, as the items lay out on the sofa to the right of Thorin’s bed: a green corduroy jacket, a waistcoat in a sage and lemon brocade, a fine white shirt, a matching white cravat, and two pairs of trousers — both pairs made of fustian, though one was sand-colored and the other a deep mahogany.

“Oh! This is mine!” Bilbo cried, coming closer to examine the waistcoat.

“From Bag End,” Thorin agreed, and he was right. Bilbo had commissioned the waistcoat not six months before leaving the Shire with the dwarves, back when he had spotted the bolt of lovely green and yellow fabric at the market. It looked just as it had when Bilbo first tried it on at the tailor’s, for all it was eight years old by now. Even the Buckland-style mother of pearl buttons were the same; Bilbo thought they might’ve been replaced since then with dwarven gems or gold.

Bilbo petted at the repeating pattern on the brocade. “Yes,” he said, to cover up how his throat was tight from a sudden lick of homesickness.

But he was surprised to note that this nostalgia felt more affectionate than melancholy, compared to the night before, and it didn’t last long; despite himself, he found his attention soon drawn to the dwarfmade jacket — embroidered ingeniously about the hems in a design that cooperated with, rather than fought, the corduroy! — as well as towards the shirt, which was of a crêpe linen so airy, it may as well have been smoke.

He turned to Thorin to seek an explanation for the multiple pairs of trousers.

“You usually wear one of these pairs when you choose to combine this waistcoat and jacket, but I’m not sure which you would prefer today.”

Bilbo pursed his lips to hide a smile, and he bounced on his heels. He liked Thorin’s choices very much, it must be said, but all the same, there was something rather nice about his husband ensuring Bilbo had his own say, concerning the two trousers.

“The light pair, I think,” Bilbo said, feeling bolstered by the decision, as he suspected was Thorin’s intent. With a deep breath, he collected himself and then proceeded to collect his clothing choices up into his arms. “Yes, this will all work very nicely. Thank you, Thorin.”

Back in their bedroom, he set about putting all of it on, taking his time so as to savor the luxurious fabrics and excellent tailoring. Everything sat just as it was supposed to, hiding and hinting at everything it ought. Bilbo was extremely satisfied.

The only moment of confusion arrived when he was smoothing everything into place. Bilbo had stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and inside the one on the right, he found four small chains sewn into the lining: golden chains, made up of very tiny links and with little crayfish-claw clasps at the end of each.

Bilbo was so struck by these little chains that he took the jacket back off and brought it over to the fire, prying the pocket open so that he could better see inside. Each chain seemed to be sewn into one of the corners of the pocket, reinforced with extra fabric and thread. He tugged at all of them, one at a time — very secure, indeed! He’d never seen anything quite like it.

Well, he supposed it was not so odd. His mother had worn a long chatelaine whenever she was devoting time to housework, after all. Hers had held scissors, tweezers, a clip for her matchbook, and most importantly, the keys to the cellar, pump room, and fire safe.

Bilbo had always just kept the keys to Bag End loose in his trouser pockets, and he’d cheerfully fallen into the habit of repeatedly misplacing all the other tools his mother had made it a point to keep so neatly at hand. But these apartments in Erebor — not to mention his office as Consort — likely required a more disciplined approach, and so these chains were surely for securing his keys.

He would need to ask after them, then. And the sooner, the better! His change of clothes was buoying his mood rather dramatically, so it was probably best to take advantage and make what headway he could, in learning about his life here.

--

“Aye, you have keys!” said Nils the steward later that morning, when Bilbo asked.

Nils, son of Ilya, seemed an aggressively fashionable sort of fellow. His clothing was simple, sharp, and fitted close to the body; his hair was long and cascading on top, but shaved close, in precise geometric patterns, on the sides; and the lenses of his spectacles were shaped like little pentagons. Bilbo didn’t know much about what was in vogue under the Mountain, but Nils held himself with the sort of alert nonchalance that signaled someone completely in control of good taste. It allowed Nils to breeze through an acknowledgement of how Thorin had already informed him of the Forgetting, so they could get right down to work.

Bilbo understood immediately why he had decided to entrust his home to this particular dwarf.

“Here, I’ve been carrying them around myself so they wouldn’t walk off on us.”

Nils removed the keys from his own pocket and handed them to Bilbo, who noted that they were already secured on a key ring, making the chains seem unnecessary. And in fact, when he tried to clip the keyring onto the little clasps, the whole thing sat oddly inside his jacket, making it bulge in a downright unsightly fashion!

So the keys went into his trouser pocket — precisely where he would have first thought to keep them, anyway — and the mystery of the chains remained unsolved, for now.

Bilbo had already gotten his tour of the apartments from Thorin, and so Nils walked the two of them directly to Bilbo’s study, where he had an array of papers ready for them to examine.

“Any notes, planning documents, and agendas related to your work as Consort are kept in your official state rooms in the Middle Galleries,” the steward started. “And in this room, your private chronicles and research projects are filed away using a system you’ve preferred not to share.”

“–That, or I have no system,” Bilbo muttered.

Nils laughed. “I wouldn’t think that, your Majesty! But I will leave it for you to settle at your leisure. Now, I have collected what household policies you developed with me. If we start here: this is our schedule for cleaning and upkeep, splitting responsibilities between your Majesty and staff. You’re the only one who cleans in your most private rooms; you insisted upon it when the residence was built, but we can change that, if you find you tire too quick for the task. And this–”

(He began pointing to the sheaves of paper upon Bilbo’s desk, one at a time.)

“–is our timetable for the tending and watering of plants. These are the marketing lists for food, only; this one here is the list for all other household goods, with addenda for his Majesty’s forge and your Majesty’s stationery. Here are the usual menus for parties: casual, formal, holiday, and state — your recipe books are in the kitchen; I’ll show you in a moment. Here are the staff rosters for the residence, his Majesty’s cabinet, and your Majesty’s cabinet; there are usually holiday gifts to sort, but no one will expect you to do that for a while yet, what with all that’s happened. This codex here details the current guild leadership, with notes on hosting each and their families. And here we have your calendar.”

It was both an overwhelming amount of paper, and a surprisingly compact representation of his life in these apartments. Bilbo knew there would be more to go through in his — what had Nils called them? His state rooms? But everything piled here, on this desk, was (in theory, at least) perfectly familiar to him.

To his recollection, all he had ever been in life, not even a quarter of a year ago, was a gentlehobbit: a landholder and custodian of one of the great estates of the Shire. That had been his primary occupation… though truthfully, he had gone about his duties rather extempore, and not always with true diligence. It sometimes felt as if he was only dealing with what-all he couldn’t avoid. Still, he had made of himself a suitable enough Master of the Hill, by the time the dwarves came around.

So while the scale of his holdings here in Erebor was different, Bilbo mused that he had already tried his hand at managing a vast property.

Bag End was the largest home in Hobbiton, after all; it had been built by Bungo in the hopes of a big family. There were enough rooms there so that five children could claim their own before any would need to double-up, and that was not even to mention the three guestrooms and the master suite! Bilbo’s parents had, of course, never gotten close to filling those bedrooms. Many of them were now used just to store Bilbo’s clothes. Or had been, at least.

If he thought about it like that, Bilbo was already an expert at managing a bunch of empty rooms. These apartments here in Erebor were only a slight step up in difficulty. And the Bilbo-that-was and Nils the steward had even written up everything about the care and keeping of them, just for him! It was a much better leg-up than his parents had left him, after they’d passed.

“You mentioned the kitchen!” He turned to Nils and made a show of rubbing his hands together in eagerness. “Remind me of the way, and I’ll start there.”

Nils was one of that sensible set of dwarves — like Balin, Gimli, and Verthandi — who could read a room, and so he brought Bilbo and the marketing lists to the kitchen, pointed out which cupboard housed Bilbo’s cookbooks, and then had the wisdom to step out soon after, leaving Bilbo well enough alone.

The kitchen was clean, but empty.

Bilbo had been away for nearly two months, convalescing in the Infirmary, and so he was pleased to see that someone had taken the time to clean out everything that might have spoiled. He snorted to himself at the image of the Company gobbling up all the food that had been in this pantry, just as they had decimated the one in Bag End–

But of course, he sobered when he realized that all of them would have been worried to distraction, with him laid up in his sick bed. He couldn’t imagine any of them being of a mind to blunt his knives, or burn his corks, or any of that.

…However the kitchen had managed to get emptied, though, it meant that Bilbo didn’t have much to work with, when it came to cookery. There was no produce nor dairy, though rather a lot of dried spices and herbs, most of which he would have preferred to work with fresh (the influence of dwarven cooking, he was sure), plus a few dusty jars of honey (which of course never spoiled).

Well, putting the pantry to rights would be work enough for one day, Bilbo supposed!

Immediately, he turned to his marketing lists: one for the vendors in Erebor, another for the sellers in Dale. He noted the easy and immediate asks first: the milk, cream, and butter; fresh flour, sugar, and eggs; a new ferment of yeast from whatever brewery he usually worked with. From there, it was a matter of assessing his usual order of foodstuffs, back from before the Forgetting.

The list he found on the page was not what he would have ordered in the Shire, though that mostly made sense. Supply was different in this part of the world, he was hosting many more people much more regularly, his tastes had needed to adapt in compromise with his husband’s — he could take his pick of justifications.

But some things seemed to be missing for no reason at all! His order of fresh produce, for instance, was so meager, it left him shuddering — surely they should all be eating much more green food.

And when he looked into his cellar, he noted that there were barrels upon barrels of ale, perry, and cider — but no wine!

And there were a number of spices missing from both his pantry and his lists that might or might not be available this far north — but based on what Thorin had said the day before in the ballroom, Bilbo thought it very likely he would be in luck, if he tried to request them.

So all of it was added: every summer vegetable he could think to ask for, four barrels of the best wine to be found round here, and an assortment of flavorings that had him bouncing on his heels in anticipation: the vanilla and cardamom the Lady Tilda had mentioned, but cinnamon, too, and coriander and caraway. Delicious!

Then there were his recipe books.

He opened up each of them, one at a time, just to flip his way through and see what he was dealing with. He seemed to boast a collection of dwarven and hobbitish cookbooks alike... though gradually, he found himself gravitating more towards the familiar Shire recipes, and his fingers slowed as they moved through the pages, as he began to note his own handwriting dotting the books’ margins.

It was the first time he had gotten to read anything new composed by his past self.

Add extra teaspoon salt.

Bake 10 min. longer in royal apt. oven. 

Mediocre!   

Bofur favourite 

Thorin favourite

BILBO favourite! 

Works if doubled, but not when tripled.   

Toast leftovers before serving.   

Balin favourite

Thorin favourite   

Liked by all, save Ori.   

Thorin favourite 

Replace elder. with black., rasp., or boysen.

Make sauce in advance. 

Thorin favourite 

Thorin favourite

Why, it looked as if he had experimented with nearly every recipe in the book!

This was thrilling, because over the course of his adult life, Bilbo had steered clear of many dishes that had been assembled into his parents’ cookbooks. Most hobbit recipes served ten, twelve, fourteen people… That meant simply too many servings to justify making them for himself. Even with his healthy appetite, Bilbo could not eat every helping before it all spoiled.

So if there was no easy way to halve (or often quarter!) the recipe, Bilbo wrote it off as a lost cause: even if the dish sounded delicious, even if it would not have ended the world to throw half of it away, even if he would have loved to lay claim to a handful of good, stalwart friends: friends he actually liked, with whom he might share and savor his cooking.

But now he had twelve such friends at his disposal! And a husband, too — a spouse who could not possibly escape eating whatever Bilbo produced! He could cook whatever he liked, and feel certain that it all would find a welcome home in one of many appreciative bellies.

Bilbo’s fingers curled eagerly over the edges of the cookbook’s pages. He could not wait for his groceries to arrive.

Chapter Text

Each morning, as they resettled into the residence, Thorin continued to pick out Bilbo’s clothes.

Bilbo’s first days back at the royal apartments were spent rediscovering the usual goings-on of his home, and so he was much occupied with cooking and cleaning and reading and accepting deliveries. The grand closet, however, still seemed awfully overwhelming, but Thorin was evidently happy to keep navigating that particular challenge on his husband’s behalf. And so Bilbo learned — gradually and firsthand — that his wardrobe in Erebor was full of the most beautiful and elaborate works of textile art imaginable, of the sort that he was always proud to wear upon his body.

And yet there came a day, about a week in, when Thorin laid out a very simple ensemble: a white shirt, some pale trousers, and a choice between two sets of braces: one embroidered with flowers and the other plain tooled leather.

“Oh,” Bilbo said, disappointed despite himself. This was the sort of thing he had worn any number of days in Bag End, and he had always been perfectly satisfied with it back then — but, well. He supposed he had gotten acclimated rather quickly to the splendor of his clothing in Erebor!

“Dressing down today, are we?” he joked to Thorin, trying to cover up his confusion.

“I thought we would go and visit your garden,” the King said.

“My garden!” Bilbo exclaimed. He’d thought the potted plants were marvel enough, but: “I have a garden here?”

“Yes.”

Thorin’s tone teetered between casual and careful; Bilbo couldn’t tell if he was trying to avoid overwhelming Bilbo, scaring him off with this news, or if Thorin was worried about exposing his own excitement about touring the garden. Perhaps it was both.

Thorin continued, “It has grown somewhat wild since your injury, and we didn’t know the best way to water it. But I am sure it is still lovely, and a little work will soon put it back to rights. In any case, the weather is perfect this morning, and your fancy tulips will be in bloom. We should go.”

Bilbo blinked hard, trying to reconcile himself to the reality of Thorin Oakenshield saying the phrase fancy tulips. But all the same, he chose the embroidered braces and went to dress himself, and then the two of them took off towards Bilbo’s garden.

It was connected to the royal residence but was located much further up the Mountainside, so that Bilbo and Thorin needed to use a large box — almost a gilded cage — that rose upwards next to a long set of switchback stairs. Thorin had stood and turned a hand crank next to the cage, all while trying to explain how this wound a set of pulleys that would draw “the lift” up to the garden. This lecture went rather over Bilbo’s head, and he only noted that, after about a minute of turning, the crank would seem to go no further. That was when he and Thorin entered the cage and slid the filigreed door shut behind them.

On a panel beside the closed door, there was a green-enameled button which, when pushed, set free whatever mechanism had been wound by the hand crank and caused the lift to rise straight up at a leisurely pace! Bilbo gasped, but when he chanced moving closer to the door, to take a look down, Thorin grabbed his arm with an urgency that startled Bilbo quite badly.

“…Sorry,” Thorin said, loosening his hold on Bilbo’s elbow reluctantly. “It’s best not to chance anything getting caught outside the door.”

Bilbo resisted the urge to shake out his arm, to dispel the feeling of being grabbed. The sensation of Thorin’s hands upon him — so suddenly! — lingered with an odd sharpness upon his skin. And he hadn’t thought he was being too foolhardy with the door, either. He wasn’t about to get himself hurt for no reason.

Regardless, the short journey of the lift ran perfectly smooth; it could not have been two full minutes before it eased to a stop at the top of its route. This time, Thorin turned about and opened a second sliding door at the back of the lift, and they exited onto a small landing, where all of the stairs that Bilbo had seen passing on their way also found their ending. A single stone door dominated this little platform, but there were four keys hanging on hooks beside it. Thorin took one and handed it to Bilbo; he kept another for himself.

“If the door should close behind us,” he said, “its location is marked upon the Mountainside, so you won’t lose sight of it. But it won’t become a door unless you have the key. Always have yours on your person. You already have one on your ring of keys, but take another now so that you have a spare. And when you come up here alone, tell someone where you’re going! They will know where to find you erelong, should you find yourself for whatever reason locked outside.”

Bilbo nodded, but Thorin gave him a steely look until Bilbo made a show of slipping the key into his waistcoat pocket. He thought this was a great deal of fuss and humbug, in all honesty — who ever heard of a door that stopped being a door? — but this feeling was snuffed right out when Thorin turned the handle and showed Bilbo out into the garden.

Where the tulips were, in fact, in bloom!

Bilbo could sense that it was early midsummer, when they left the embrace of the Mountain — too late for tulips in the Shire, but Erebor was far to the northeast of the world, and the garden itself was located at a high altitude. Bilbo could well imagine that these factors might push the tulips’ blooming later in the year.

And so here they were: fancy tulips, indeed! They lifted up their heads in every color imaginable, from sunshine yellow streaked with orange to the solid black of most velvet night. There were tulips with frilled petals, with fluted petals, with three times as many petals as usual. Beds and beds of tulips.

Yes, Bilbo thought to himself, desperately cheered by the sight of them. Very fancy.

But more than the tulips, Bilbo was dazzled by the immense brightness of the garden, which was nestled into a pocket worn in the Mountain’s face and sheltered by two great, craggy rises of green Ereborean marble on either side. It was, like Bilbo’s personal library, a sort of ravine sliced into the Mountainside, but the sun poured down from above and sent the entirety of the green space glittering.

Bilbo had expected it to be terribly windy — and even cold, since he had heard traveling tales from his mother about distant tall mountains capped with snow and ice. But he saw that the narrow basin of the garden was in fact cased in, far over his head, with a ceiling of thick glass — or perhaps crystal — held together with cames of green metal; it made a pattern just like the stained-glass ceilings in their apartments.

The ceiling descended down to the ground at the far end of the ravine, where the great marble walls protecting the garden did not quite meet. This opening was guarded by a pair of glass double-doors. These were wide enough to accommodate a path headed outside, and their threshold was high enough to clear a small mountain stream that Bilbo noticed flowing through the garden, all the way out under the doors themselves.

There were even some open grates between the panes above, to keep the space from stifling. But the wind could find no easy way in, and so the garden was warm and a little humid from the stark sunlight above.

And what a host of flowers was fed by that sunlight!

Cordoned off by little walkways of green clover — and cut through with that bubbling mountain stream — there were the tulip beds, of course, and these sat in front of big hydrangea bushes and hostas that hadn’t yet blossomed. Yet there was more. It looked like the first batch of roses had just faded, but the pink peonies were the size of cabbages, frothy upon their shrubs, and the lupine and coneflowers were starting to bloom. Bilbo could even spot a chorus of herbs — mint, thyme, lavender, basil, rosemary, chives — making up a flourishing kitchen garden in a patch of full sun. The high green-marble walls, meanwhile, played host to the shade plants: coral bells and begonias lined the base of the stoneface, giving way to bleeding hearts and lords-and-ladies.

The plants were bounteous, and they stretched right up to that place where Bilbo’s garden opened up onto the rest of the Mountainside. Bilbo could spot even more growth on the other side of the doors there, though that area outside was rockier, hardier. Bilbo sensed it had a wilder charm than the lovely, cosseted greenhouse in which he was standing now.

Bilbo turned away from where he found himself, right next to the glass doorway. It seemed he had wandered the complete length of the garden without giving his feet the go-ahead, and so — still stunned — he turned back around. The view was just as lovely reversed, as he looked back towards the door into the Mountain, though from this angle Bilbo could see a gardening shed and series of little wooden structures in the far corner of the garden.

His heart jumped.

“Are those–?” he asked Thorin, who had evidently followed him as he walked through the garden. He tried not to sound too eager. “Do I keep–?”

Thorin smiled. “Let’s go see them.”

Bilbo almost ran back to the entryway into the Mountain; he only barely managed to restrict himself to a sort of hustling trot. But as he passed through the garden again, he could see that his inkling was proving correct: there were indeed honeybees passing amongst the flowers, indiscriminately buzzing from lavender to clover to coneflower to chive.

Bees! The Bilbo Baggins who lived in Erebor kept his very own bees!

He slowed himself before he got too close to the hives. They were built as a series of covered wooden troughs supported by sturdy wooden legs, and Bilbo could see the bees entering and exiting from little doorways at their base. The look of the hives themselves was familiarly hobbitish, but even from a number of paces away, he could see that the wood was decorated with many fine carvings and loving little flourishes that made the hives look like miniature palaces. Dwarven accents, indeed!

Bilbo’s fingers twitched at his sides. He felt just on the cusp of striding over and inspecting the bees, but he was also terribly aware that he was clad in only a thin shirt and trousers, unprotected from stings.

“I need…” he tried, but immediately, his voice trailed off.

Whatever it was — the action that Bilbo needed to do next — it sat upon the very tip of his tongue: a near literal weight that caused his entire jaw to tense. It was a heightened version of the way he felt when trying to summon a precise and illusive word to add to his verses, when he was composing poetry. The exact word would escape him, but he could almost sense its borders by considering what it was not, trying on synonyms and casting them aside. He usually found the word eventually.

But as he stood in front of the hives, Bilbo realized that it wasn't as simple as forgetting a word; this was the feeling of Forgetting what seemed like an entire lifetime. He swallowed through a sudden swell of ice cold panic. He didn’t know what to do next. He didn’t know what the bees needed.

But Thorin was already beside him, directing him with a gentle hand upon his shoulder towards the gardening shed not twenty feet away.

When they entered, the shed was dim and compact — but it was very neat all the same, and it smelled strongly and cleanly of cedar, even though there was a bit of dust upon most surfaces. It looked a bit like the shed at Bag End, though Bilbo had only been in there a handful of times, briefly, and solely at the behest of Hamfast Gamgee.

For a moment, he was overwhelmed again by the array of hand tools hung up on the walls and laid out on the potting bench and stacked up on the ground.

But then Thorin began swiping the dust off of the benchtop with a handkerchief, casual as you please! And Bilbo’s mind seemed almost to settle. And he reached out to start brushing the tools clean, as well. It was easier, then, to find what he needed.

Because: there, on the left side of the table, was the hand-smoker he’d need to calm the bees. He watched as his hands filled the canister with dried sumac seeds from a pot on the other side of the benchtop; that was the kindling. Then there was a knife for the comb and a big, shallow bowl for collecting the wax and honey.

Well, now! That wasn’t so hard, he thought. Downright intuitive, really.

With these tools assembled on the benchtop, Bilbo took up the wide-brimmed hat hanging by the door, dripping with a colorless tulle veil; this hat went on first, before he pulled on the thick, white jacket hanging next to it and fastened the buttons up close at the neck, bunching the veil protectively about his face. Finally, there was a pair of matching trousers to pull over the ones he was already wearing.

No gloves, he realized — though the thought of going without them did not make him feel nervous; not in the way that the thought of only wearing his lightweight clothing had. Upon thinking it through, he supposed he would need the dexterity of bare hands to handle the hives, rather than dulling his sense of touch with gloves.

It was at this point that Bilbo turned back to the door, patting his pockets. Of course he had no idea where he might find a matchbook to light the hand-smoker.

So: “Matches?” he asked of Thorin, who was still standing just outside the shed.

Thorin raised his eyebrows. “Flint,” he offered instead, pulling out his tinderbox.

The little kit was nearly the exact twin of the tinderbox Balin had passed to Bilbo, back out on the road. But the memory of that misunderstanding did not hurt so much now. Instead, Bilbo only smiled and shook his head. Dwarves and their flint! As if matches were not twice as convenient!

“All right, then, but you’ll have to be the one to light it,” he said, and while Thorin laughed, he did take the smoker and set it down upon a tree stump stool just outside the shed. He had the kindling lit in seconds.

From there, Bilbo was off on his tasks like some mechanized thing. He now understood exactly what he needed to do, one step after the next, almost without hesitation. It felt so good, that he feared scaring away the easy feeling by examining it too deeply — and so he let himself fall into his work.

He wafted the smoke about the hives, and the bees either fled or calmed; then he was lifting the roof from the first hive to expose the top-bars, from which the sheets of comb were hanging. They bulged with an overabundance of wax, probably from being left unattended during Bilbo’s convalescence.

He started first with the side of the hive closest to the little carved bee-doorway, just to check upon the quieted fellows who were bunched together there, but he felt that he should not remove any honey from this part of the hive. Instead he worked his way towards the back of the trough and started slicing the honey-heavy comb into his collecting dish.

His harvest he then brought back into the gardening shed. With sawing slashes of his knife, he scored down the length of the comb to uncap all the little honey-filled chambers. Then, he left the whole comb tilted over the dish to drain; he knew he would come back to separate the last of the honey and wax later. He grabbed another bowl and checked the other hives, harvesting what comb seemed to have grown thick in those as well, before he slid the roofs back onto each hive and went inside to remove his bee-keeping habit.

While he was in the shed, he spotted a large watering can, which he filled with water from the stream running through the garden. Its source bubbled down from a carved opening in the rockface, creating a stream under which he could easily position the can. It was heavy when he hefted it up again, but the weight was satisfying, as was the feeling of watering his plants back to healthiness. He filled and emptied the watering can many times, and then he set about deadheading his roses and removing the flower buds from his basil plants, so that both species could keep growing as they should.

Through all of this, Bilbo knew he was operating on some strange combination of muscle memory and what little he could remember hearing about gardening and bee-keeping in the Shire. He was likewise aware that his actions were probably not perfect, probably not up to the standard of the Bilbo-that-was.

But it was an immense pleasure to simply do: to accomplish, and not second-guess or overthink, letting his mind wander to what tasks it would, and allowing his body to move under the force of its own momentum. It felt wonderful to trust himself — as he had been afraid to do, he realized, since waking up in Erebor.

After the last of the pesky buds were plucked from the basil, Bilbo brought himself upright, stretching his sore arms and shoulders and lunging a bit to loosen the tight feeling in his hips. The sun had moved overhead, and soon it would disappear from view over the narrow glass ceiling, which would leave the south-facing garden lit only by the ambient light of afternoon. Bilbo blinked, feeling both freshly awakened from his chore-trance and dazed by the idea that he had surely just spent hours puttering about a garden, which he had never done before. Not in his entire life! From his parents to the Gamgees — and all the grey feeling in between — he’d never had the run of a garden all to himself.

He had only an instant to wonder if Thorin had wandered back into their apartments before he spotted the King settled upon a bench near the doorway into the Mountain, safely on the side of the garden not occupied by beehives. Thorin had his pipe lit, Bilbo noted as he made his way back over. The smoke was settling into a haze in the air above the bench, since there was no wind in the garden to waft it away; Bilbo wondered what the bees made of the pipesmoke, and if they liked it better than sumac.

Yet, as he drew near to the bench, ready to apologize to Thorin for neglecting him in favor of yardwork, Bilbo was stopped short by a familiar smell.

“Is that Old Toby?” he blurted, staring at Thorin’s pipe.

“Aye.” Thorin tilted the bowl to check the state of his pipeweed and was evidently satisfied enough with what he found to offer: “Would you like a taste?”

“Oh, yes, thank you!” Bilbo said.

He hurried over to the bench, and it was only when he had the pipe in hand that he considered the reality of smoking it: Thorin’s personal pipe, still damp from his mouth and warm from touch and ember alike. It made Bilbo blush and clear his throat to consider the intimacy of raising it to his own lips. But really, it wasn’t so odd. He had, after all, shared many a pipe with his childhood friends, and Thorin was a dear friend now, so it was all of a piece.

…Well, no. Bilbo’s thoughts stopped short for a moment. It isn’t all of a piece. Thorin is my husband.

My husband, who should be closer to me than any friend.

–But no matter! he told himself, his thoughts starting up again.

Because it hardly made a difference! Husband, friend… You could share a pipe with either and invite no awkwardness, and ultimately, Thorin was both. So. This gesture should give him no pause.

And yet.

Bilbo could not help but feel, keenly, that he was neither of those things to Thorin, in this moment. ‘Friend’ assumed a lack of passion; ‘husband’ assumed the question of passion to be long resolved.

And so, to Bilbo, it felt as if neither of those labels quite applied. He was something else, something in between: something wavering and waiting, for whom an indirect touch of the lips would be an unasked-for intimacy, a thing not quite shameful, but certainly secret.

He drummed his fingers upon the stem of Thorin’s pipe.

Oh, but this was nonsense! Here he was standing about like a fool, leaving a lit pipe unsmoked, and anyway, he was so tired!

It was a good sort of tired — a very fulfilling, heartening sort of exhaustion, better than the fatigue from his head wound — but it meant he simply didn’t have the energy to straighten out questions of friendship and attraction and marriage.

In fact, his mind only had room for the knowledge that nothing sounded better, in the entire world, than sagging down onto this very bench and taking a great double-lungful of Old Toby.

And so that was precisely what Bilbo did. He placed his mouth right where Thorin’s had been, deliberately thinking nothing of it, and drew in a breath.

He could have cried from how wonderful it felt: the taste of the smoke, the way it satisfied him in just the same way stretching his shoulders and hips had done! He understood, now, why the old gaffers at the Green Dragon would put their feet up, smoking and drinking after a hard day’s work. Perhaps he ought to have felt ashamed, that he honestly could not remember working harder or longer in his life than he had today. But a smoke at the end of all that effort felt toe-curlingly good.

“You remember,” Thorin commented at last, after Bilbo had spent a great long while imbibing.

Bilbo blinked. This sounded like only the beginning of a statement, and yet Thorin’s tone suggested he had no more to say. Nevertheless, Bilbo prompted: “Hmmm?”

Thorin turned to give him a measured glance. “I’ve been watching you, and I can see that you remember the garden. You move through it just as you did three months ago.

“Oh.”

Bilbo looked down at his hands so that he would not have to see that cautiously optimistic look upon Thorin’s face. But looking down made him remember that he was, in fact, still in possession of the pipe, and he quickly made to give it back.

“Well, no.” He used the flurry of movement from the hand-off to force himself to speak. He didn’t want to clarify the state of his memory to Thorin; he dreaded smashing Thorin’s fragile hope that the old Bilbo was coming back. “I’m afraid I don’t recall the look of this place at all, or ever being here before. So, it’s not so much ‘remembering,’ really, as…”

Bilbo opened and closed his mouth in frustration, trying to explain how his actions today had felt familiar, routine. Almost soothingly involuntary.

“It’s like I already know what to do,” he said slowly, after a stretch of consideration. “Even though I don’t remember ever learning. I always know what to do next, here. It’s very odd.”

“Still.” When Bilbo looked up, Thorin did not look as disappointed as Bilbo had thought he would. “That is a sort of remembering.”

“After a fashion, perhaps.” Bilbo cleared his throat, which was hot from the discomfort of the conversation and from his mouthfuls of smoke. He nodded towards the pipe, which was sitting — burnt-out, now — in Thorin’s hand. “Thank you, again, for that. It was exactly what I needed. Does this mean you’re off that dreadful Southlinch?”

“Yes,” Thorin said, smiling. “You won me over.”

“Good! Good. That stuff will kill you.”

Thorin scoffed a bit and resettled himself on the bench, as he started to ready the pipe for a return to his pocket. “This is still pipeweed, Bilbo. It’ll do my lungs in, either way.”

“Excuse you!” Bilbo said tartly. “Shire strains can be very healthful, whereas the only thing mannish weed is good for is giving you a headache and a cough.”

“You’re biased. You think Old Toby could cure a broken arm.”

“On the contrary. Old Toby is delicious, but if you want something medicinal, you should always reach for Longbottom leaf. Longbottom for–”

“Longbottom for longevity,” Thorin said, at precisely the same moment and in exactly the same tone as Bilbo did.

Bilbo blinked to hear it. He realized then that they had probably had this exact conversation at least once before. It was a joke to Thorin, but the affectionate cadence of his voice as he recited that old Shire saw had revealed it to be the long sort of joke shared between couples: worn out to the point of comfortable softness. It put Bilbo’s pale attempt at flirtation to shame.

“Oh! Right.” Bilbo could hear the nervous laughter in his own voice, and he tapped his palms upon his thighs in an attempt at levity. “You’ve heard all this before. Silly me.”

This made Thorin look stricken, for whatever reason. “Bilbo–”

Bilbo hated that he had put that look on Thorin’s face, and so he said, instinctively, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be–” But he had to pause, unsure of what exactly he was apologizing for. “It’s just that I don’t mean to bore you with my repetition. And remind you of my Forgetfulness, and– well, and all that.”

It must be so lonely, after all, for Thorin: to still remember the lovers’ shorthand he had shared with the Bilbo-that-was, and to now be unable to use it. It must feel like being the only speaker of a dying language left alive.

Bilbo wished that he remembered — not only to ease Thorin’s discomfort, but because Bilbo liked the way Thorin sounded, when he was in love, and it was maddening to think that at one point, it had been Bilbo himself building that grammar with him, inventing new words and new worlds. To be on the outside of all that, now, was causing Bilbo the worst and most confusing sort of jealousy. He wasn’t missing, coveting, something he had never had; he had it, all right. But he knew his hands were too clumsy and unpracticed to hold on to it, just like he knew there was some other version of himself that would know how to grasp on just right and not let go.

“I should tidy the place up.” He stood and wiped his sweaty palms down his front, which was streaked with a great deal of dirt and a little bit of honey and wax. All in all, the shirt was probably a total loss. It was a good thing that it was nothing special; Thorin had chosen appropriately this morning. “I’ll be back in two shakes.”

Thorin sat very still upon the bench, and his expression was blank, which sent a pang through Bilbo’s chest. He had learned, by now, that such blankness did not mean Thorin felt apathetic, but rather that he was stifling any proof of his unhappiness. And so Bilbo knew he was being unfair; he shouldn’t make Thorin feel so badly over something that was Bilbo’s problem to solve, and that neither of them could do much about right now.

He reached out and rested a hand upon Thorin’s arm. Even if he was not the right Bilbo, the Bilbo-that-was, he was the Bilbo that was here now, and he was becoming terribly, terribly fond of Thorin.

“With the honey,” Bilbo added. “I’ll come back with the honey, and we can have it with our tea. Fresh honey and some seedcakes. Doesn’t that sound nice? Nothing special, but it will tide us over, won’t it?”

--

Bilbo and Thorin made their way back down to their apartments, carrying the dishes of harvested honey with them into the lift.

The process of unlocking the door back into the Mountain, which Bilbo had foolishly dismissed earlier, had in fact been quite magical and startling to witness. When Thorin brought his key close to the stone, the notched patterns of the door carved into the cliffside erupted into bright blue light, so vividly that Bilbo shied away on instinct. Thorin assured him, however, that the sigils were entirely safe and perfectly reliable, so he should not fear passing under them once the door eased open.

So now both Bilbo and Thorin were back in their kitchen, and Bilbo had started brewing a big pot of tea. He’d done it because he had said he would, up in the garden, but he honestly expected Thorin to wander away when the baking of the cakes started, and so he’d thought the tea fated to be drunk by Bilbo alone. But Thorin seemed content to sit at the table, to sip his tea and watch Bilbo throw together the seedcakes using all of his new, restocked ingredients — just as, pipe in hand and without complaint, he had watched Bilbo buzz around the garden earlier.

The making of the cakes was, in truth, exactly like the act of gardening... save that he could remember perfecting this recipe in the Shire. Bilbo felt the same ease and absorption when sifting the dry ingredients, and measuring out the vanilla (spirited up from Dale, as promised!), and grinding the spices, as he had when watering and tending to his flowers under the sun. He even found that he only had time to worry about the silence between himself and Thorin when, at last, he had cut up the cakes and set the tray down before his husband.

Bilbo took a seat and addressed the first group of slices, dropping dollops of whipped butter on top, so that it would start melting from the lingering oven-heat. He then drizzled the whole tray full of cakes with fresh honey for good measure. Thorin barely waited for him to finish before he plucked up a piece drenched in dripping, honeyed butter.

And when he tasted it, he moaned.

Bilbo, who had by now taken up his own portion, choked on the first bite.

“By the good green earth, Thorin,” he scolded. “Please!”

Thorin, for his part, gave him a questioning look from underneath his eyelashes. The loveliness of such a tableau was only intensified, for Bilbo, by the way Thorin took another large, appreciative bite of the seedcake slice, finishing it off. Bilbo’s body flushed with heat as he watched Thorin savor the taste and suck his thumb full into his mouth, licking up all of the butter and honey.

But then Bilbo scoffed at this showiness and looked away.

“It’s a fine cake,” he explained with a grumble, “but it’s only fine. You don’t have to make such a production of liking it; it’s a perfectly average, everyday recipe.”

Thorin frowned. “Perhaps it’s everyday to you, but I have never had this before.”

“What!” Bilbo cried, swallowing the mouthful he’d just taken. “What do you mean? You’ve never had my seedcakes?”

Thorin shook his head and chose another buttered slice.

“What!” Bilbo exclaimed once more. He fell silent for a moment and stared down at the cakes. “…I don’t see how that’s possible. Why, sometimes I made these every other day back in Bag End! I could make them in my sleep! They’re incredibly popular! I think they’re most of the reason why anyone came to take tea with me at all!”

Thorin cleared his throat and said with a smile, “Yes, that’s exactly what a person would say about an entirely average and unimpressive recipe.”

Bilbo grunted a dismissal at that. “And you all definitely wolfed them down when you first looted my pantry, back in the Shire!”

“There were none left for me, then, when I arrived.”

“When you arrived late, you mean,” Bilbo corrected, under his breath.

He sat there, tapping a finger upon his chin, and tried to puzzle through this mystery. He was so greatly confounded by it that he had stopped eating — but Thorin was not similarly affected in the least. The King had turned his attention toward the unbuttered slices, though he took up the dipper to cover them all in a great deal more honey, first.

When Bilbo stayed silent, Thorin cleared his throat again. “And I like this curious flavoring. I don’t remember you using it, before the Forgetting.”

“Oh, that’s the caraway,” Bilbo said distractedly. “I had a fourth-peck brought up from Dale. They’re the seeds for which the cake is named, in fact.”

At this, Thorin barked out an immediate burst of laughter. He covered his mouth for a moment and then tugged at the neck of his tunic, shaking his head. “Well, aye then, that would explain it!”

Bilbo looked up at Thorin and saw he was wearing a queer sort of expression. A little stunned, a little amused. The King took another bite of cake before saying:

“I’m allergic to caraway. Many dwarves are.”

Bilbo opened and shut his mouth. “What’s ‘allergic’?”

Oddly, this question made Thorin huff with more laughter as he chewed. He explained, when Bilbo looked askance: “It means that caraway makes me sick. It gives me a reaction. I’m sorry; I hadn’t recalled that hobbits do not know of this affliction.”

Bilbo’s very heart seemed to lurch.

“Affliction! Reaction! What reaction?”

“Nothing bad–”

“Thorin, what reaction?” pressed Bilbo. He recalled what Thorin had said on the quest about not caring much for food. Was it because food really did tend to be dangerous, for him?

“I’ll itch, mostly, and swell. A little shortness of breath. Fatigue.”

“Shortness of breath!” Bilbo gasped, awash in sudden terror at the thought of problems with Thorin’s breathing. And then: “Don’t eat more!” when Thorin reached for the plate of cakes.

Thorin frowned. “But they’re good.”

When Bilbo opened his mouth, Thorin simply shook his head and picked out a serving from one of the unbuttered cakes. He even twiddled his fingers in absentminded anticipation before nudging the two surrounding slices aside.

“The damage is done,” he said. “More won’t hurt.”

Where before the sight of Thorin enjoying his food had filled Bilbo with heat, he now felt as if the kitchen were being flooded with ice water. “There’s nothing we can do? Oughtn’t I go and fetch Oin?”

Thorin shrugged and swallowed his current bite. He didn’t seem to notice the way his hand came up to scratch at his throat. “He’ll make me a tea that won’t do much. Hardly worth it. Bilbo, really, caraway isn’t life-threatening, not to me.”

“Allergic can be life-threatening?” Bilbo yelped.

Thorin was already reaching for another slice, so Bilbo leapt up from his seat and shoved the plate out of reach, nearly off the table. A couple of the cakes did, in fact, topple onto the floor.

For a moment, they only stared down at the crumbled cakes in silence.

And then: Thorin laughed. He stood, and the next thing that Bilbo knew, Thorin was in front of him, murmuring, “Peace, Bilbo!” and notching his hands at either side of Bilbo’s jaw.

He leaned in and tilted Bilbo’s face up; he kissed Bilbo twice. Both kisses were placed high upon the cheek: first on the left, then on the right. They were dry, warm, sexless things — no prelude to any other act of lovemaking, unburdened by anything save affection and delight.

But Bilbo only untangled what these kisses entailed a long time after they’d happened: later that evening, in his– in their bedroom — in their marriage bed, in fact! When he lay there, under the gifted quilt, alone and blushing.

But now, back in this moment, there was only the blur and flurry of Thorin’s beard and his breath and his lips, crowding Bilbo in, overwhelming him with scent and warmth. Bilbo felt his whole body go limp with shock and fluster and sensation. He was sure his face had never been so red.

And then Thorin let go — quickly enough that Bilbo tripped forward a bit, since Thorin had been supporting him almost entirely by that gentle hold on his jaw, as Bilbo had let himself collapse dreamily into his grasp. But now Thorin had dropped his hands away from Bilbo’s face fast as anything, exactly as Bilbo had hoped he would let go of the seedcakes.

“I’m sorry,” the King said in a flash. His words rushed together like his kisses had rushed over Bilbo’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Bilbo. I wasn’t thinking.”

Bilbo shook his head to clear it, but Thorin must have taken it for a denial, since he kept speaking.

“It won’t happen again; I only forgot myself. I forgot what had hap–” He made a sound of frustration. “That you had Forgotten. I didn’t remember. I’m sorry.”

That was so unbelievable, Bilbo had to speak, even with his head still muddled as it was. “How on earth did you manage that? I can’t forget about it for an instant!”

Thorin’s cheeks were darkening, going pink. “It felt so familiar. Just now.” He cleared his throat again. “I am sorry.”

“No, it’s not th–” Bilbo wrung his hands, but quickly recalled that Thorin had always used to stare at Bilbo’s jittery fingers when they’d been sharing the road —

(and back then, Bilbo had only blamed Thorin for the openness of his distaste at Bilbo’s twitchiness; he had not blamed Thorin for the distaste itself. Fidgeting was, after all, an especially featherbrained and hobbitish sort of trait. But it was bad manners to stare and draw attention to a failing, and he hadn’t liked to be reminded of how much his personality disgusted Thorin.)

— and so now Bilbo tried to turn the gesture into a much more stately brushing-off-of-the-waistcoat, just in case.

Oh, but to be worrying about what he was doing with his hands at a time like this! When Thorin was ill! He was going ‘allergic,’ for goodness’ sake. No wonder he was confused!

“I should be sorry,” Bilbo insisted wretchedly. “And I am, of course. I fed you caraway. Which could kill you!”

Thorin made a throaty, dismissive noise. “I just told you that it can’t. If I knew of any food that could, I would check with you before you gave me a new recipe. I truly would; I’m sure you remember that I can be forthright about food.”

Bilbo remembered again their conversation about the ramson stew, and this forced him to give up trying to control his hands entirely. Instead, he brought them up to scrape over his whole face.

Yes: hadn’t he learned from Thorin himself that not all food was safe for dwarves? That many had taken ill before, from unknown victuals?

No wonder there were items conspicuously missing from his grocery lists, Bilbo thought to himself under the shelter of his hands. He’d been a fool to introduce who-knows-what from who-knows-where into his pantry. And he’d been cooking for Thorin for a week now, with new-fangled ingredients from Dale in so many of the recipes–

“Anything I give you could make you have a reaction, if you’ve not had it before!” he burst out. “You might not even know how the ingredients will make you react!”

“Bilbo, this is not your fault. It was my responsibility to tell you, but I forgot. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

At the sound of Thorin speaking more urgently, Bilbo lowered his hands.

His husband, standing before him, looked as if he wanted to embrace Bilbo — to comfort him again, as he had done earlier with that close flush of kisses — but he kept his hands clasped before him, shoulders rigid, posture unbending. Unbending, yet penitent.

It was the sight of this cowed stiffness that led Bilbo to realize that Thorin was including the physicality of those kisses in what he was apologizing for, in what he thought had frightened Bilbo. He was holding himself back because he did not wish to be too familiar.

But it was the sensation of buzzing pleasure in Bilbo’s cheeks that forced him to realize that he did want some familiarity; he wished to be held and comforted, and he would not want Thorin to apologize for such an impulse.

So Bilbo came in close. He raised a hand to lay upon Thorin’s, where they were clutched in front of him, restrained and restraining.

“Thorin.” said Bilbo. “It’s really all right. The kisses– They did not frighten me, and you know, I don’t– mind that you thought things had gone back to the way they were, for a moment. It doesn’t offend me. It’s just surprising. We have come so far — compared to what I remember from the quest, I mean. In terms of closeness between us. Obviously. Actually, it’s nice to be reminded how far we’ve come, in a way, ha! It’s just… startling, sometimes. It’s–” He huffed out a breath and forced it all out at once: “You must know I find you very fetching, and I know we’re married! So I don’t mind the closeness. That’s, um. That’s all I wanted to say.”

It was an absurd tangle of understatements, and it was certainly not said very prettily. But it was also all Bilbo could manage, just then.

He was repaid by the sight of Thorin’s astonished face blushing fiercely, so that Bilbo couldn’t help but say, “Oh, Thorin, you’re turning all red!”

Thorin’s poleaxed expression gave way to an embarrassed sort of scowl.

“I promise it is the caraway,” he ground out, tilting his face away in a halfhearted attempt to hide. “I can take a few compliments from my husband without falling apart.”

His voice had gone brooding and gritty, which Bilbo found quite appealing — but then Thorin made a halting sort of cough, and Bilbo realized that his throat must be bothering him. Because of the caraway. Which he was not supposed to have eaten.

“Won’t you let me get Oin? At least let me send a guard for him.” When he received no reply, Bilbo persisted: “Please, Thorin, you’re the King! I can’t let your allergic affect you like this. It isn’t right.”

Thorin chuckled a little at this, for whatever reason, and then he sighed. It was only a moment more before he allowed that sending a guard for Oin might be prudent, if it would ease Bilbo’s worry.

“And after you have done that,” he told Bilbo, “I’m teaching you the correct usage of the word ‘allergic.’”

“Semantics!” Bilbo scoffed, already herding Thorin back into one of the chairs to wait. “Giving me a vocabulary lesson, at a time like this…”

“I have to,” said Thorin, mildly. “If I allowed you out in public, confusing an adjective for a noun in such a fashion — you’d never let me hear the end of it.”

--

So yes: Bilbo was certainly accomplishing a great deal, in the weeks since he had returned to the residence!

For starters, he had finally established a respectable social circle, one that would have made his parents proud. The key to keeping company — which he finally realized for himself, not long after the debacle with Thorin’s “allergy” — was being able to cook for his visitors, something he’d not been able to do in the Infirmary, nor even during At-Homes in Bag End. All the activity of cooking meant he did not have to spend every moment sitting still, making eye contact with company over a dull little tea setting. Instead, he could occupy his hands and mind with something tasty he could feed his guests, once he was finished.

And the dwarves were apparently accustomed to this state of affairs, too — at least, no one seemed to find it rude, as folks might have done in the Shire. In fact, Bilbo was starting to understand why the dwarves had not quite known how to feed him after his injury. It seemed the Bilbo-that-was had taken strict ownership of the task of feeding all his dwarves!

So, in the royal kitchen: Bofur would whittle while Bilbo chopped, Dori made weavings on his little hand loom while Bilbo sauteed, Balin carried in great stacks of correspondence that he signed and sent off while Bilbo whisked, and Ori even stopped by to pick out Bilbo’s old favorites from the library, while Bilbo remained in the kitchen and focused on caramelizing onions.

“You’re so lucky,” Ori remarked when he returned with a teetering stack of recommendations. “Getting to read all your favorite books again for the first time! I’m almost jealous of you.”

Dwalin, unexpectedly, was one of Bilbo’s most frequent guests in the kitchen — but this should perhaps have been no surprise. After all, even though Dwalin had always taken no more than his fair share of the stewpot on their quest, he had been the first dwarf inside Bag End, and with that brief temporal advantage, he had managed to eat not only the dinner Bilbo had prepared for himself, but also the accompanying dessert, almost all of Bilbo’s biscuits, and Bilbo’s prize-winning tomatoes only just after he’d rescued them from Ori.

Bilbo would have been intimidated to have Dwalin underfoot so often, since he was an intimidating sort of fellow… except that Thorin was around to play co-host with Bilbo more often than he was not.

Thorin was still taking a break from the Throne —

(he probably imagined they were in the tail-end of Bilbo’s recovery, which made Bilbo cringe to think of how he had recalled exactly zero memories from the past seven years)

— and so his presence was almost always on hand to smooth over Bilbo’s habitual anxiety amongst visitors.

Thorin was especially skilled at wrangling Fili and Kili and Dis, who came to call as much as they could, despite being saddled with most of Bilbo and Thorin’s usual duties. Bilbo found he could abide them much better when Thorin was around. The boys were far less likely to talk over each other in their uncle’s presence, for one, and Bilbo found that Dis’ sharp eye and mocking tongue were often drawn towards her brother (and away from Bilbo). Luckily, the King seemed perfectly happy to either absorb or parry her teasing, leaving Bilbo almost entirely unscathed.

And really, it did Bilbo good to see Thorin teased! Every time Thorin laughed to hear himself called stubborn, or hot-tempered, or ‘dull as the wrong end of an axe’ by Dis, it chipped away at Bilbo’s apprehension that, at any moment, Thorin might snap and turn as cold and dour as he had acted on the road to Erebor.

The only time Thorin reliably abandoned Bilbo to host anyone alone was when Bifur came to call. Bifur and Bilbo had picked up their Iglishmek lessons once more, and from the very start, Bilbo could tell that Thorin deeply approved of this instruction — the King must be pleased to see Bilbo reengaging with dwarven culture, he supposed. Thorin had smiled so broadly the first time he’d seen Bilbo’s hands moving slowly through the gesture-signs that the look of it had completely stalled Bilbo’s mind and stilled his hands.

Thorin was a sight on any occasion, but when he was smiling, all bets were off!

Bilbo would have been willing to shove down his fluster at Thorin’s handsomeness if it meant Thorin might be included in his Iglishmek conversations with Bifur. But it was Thorin himself who couldn’t quite hack the lessons. His hands tended to move through the signs too quickly and subtly for Bilbo to understand, and he wasn’t able to slow himself down enough, not as easily as Bifur was.

The moment Thorin tried to make his Iglishmek simpler, slower, and the movements more exaggerated and expansive… he forgot entirely how to sign what he meant. He would sit with his hands frozen in the air, his mouth open and hesitating and his brow pinched. It was a very endearing look on him, if Bilbo dared say so. Almost as fetching as the big smile.

Not flexible, Bifur explained to Bilbo, in his slow and precise Iglishmek. His eyes danced. Thorin tries his best, but: not flexible.

In response, Thorin made a rude gesture which was very easy to interpret, no matter how fast or slow he made it.

However, an upside to Thorin’s intransigent gesture-signs was that it meant he left Bilbo and Bifur to talk alone, and so Bilbo could complain all he wanted with only Bifur as witness. It turned out that Iglishmek did encourage a certain forthrightness, and Bilbo’s limited vocabulary induced as much freedom as it produced constraint. It was, in short, nothing like speaking to another hobbit!

Bilbo had to say I’m tired instead mincing about with “Oh, don’t mind my yawning, it’s only that I didn’t sleep well last night from these blasted headaches of mine, but you know things like that hardly ever slow me down, not in any real way, so don’t you worry about me.”

He only had the gesture-signs to say The Mountain makes baking hard rather than “Now I’d lower my expectations for these scones if I were you, since the altitude around here makes the baking times wonkier than Lobelia’s wardrobe, haha, just a bit of fun, but she does like to be noticed, doesn’t she.”

Bilbo could reveal This is so frustrating without needing to get into “I’m terrified I’ll never remember anything, and I’ll be trapped here with you all forever, in a life I can never understand, and you all will be trapped here with me, a Consort who cannot lead. And then where will I be, having everything I never knew I wanted, with no way of pleasing everyone so I can keep it?”

…When Bilbo thought about it like that — like he was getting away with something out in plain sight, rather than navigating layers and layers and layers of words — it made bluntness much more fun.

So, all in all, having the royal residence as a place to host the Company was a very workable state of affairs. In fact, it was everything Bilbo hadn’t known he was missing in the Shire. If he had been dropped down into such a circumstance seven years ago — suddenly having an army of dear friends, and worthwhile daily occupation, and not a single Forgotten memory — why, Bilbo would have been perfectly content.

Sadly, there was still the specter of the Bilbo-that-was to contend with. And it was with this ghost in mind that Bilbo finally sent word back to the Shire.

His purpose in this correspondence was three-fold. First, he needed to inform his relatives that he had sustained a head injury which had resulted in a Forgetting. Second, he needed to gather whatever advice was on offer for retrieving his missing memories as quickly as possible. And third, he needed to halt the sale of Bag End.

This last was a miserable business, as it involved spoiling the hopes of a favored family-member. But Bilbo felt an unspeakable, bone-deep resistance to the thought of his parents’ smial in the hands of anyone else, and so the proceedings must be suspended. Drogo, if he was smart, would understand this to mean the sale was off, for good, and he’d let it go with grace. If he didn’t, well, Thorin had informed Bilbo that he now kept a Hobbiton solicitor on retainer (after some previous trouble with Bag End, during Bilbo’s initial absence from the Shire), and so off to court the dispute would go!

Bilbo knew it would be a good long while before his letters, borne by Ereborean ravens, reached the Shire and resulted in any advice or action, and so he did not dither in sending them off: three in number, so similar they were near-triplicate.

The first (and most apologetic) was sent out to cousin Drogo. The second (and most focused on fact-finding re: the Forgetting) was sent to cousin Fortinbras, Thain of the Shire. And the final (and by far the most frank) was sent to the solicitor, whose name Thorin apparently found very humorous indeed.

“It’s preposterous!” Thorin crowed, since he had only just finished howling with laughter. He apparently had not already known the fellow’s full name, and was gleeful to hear it once Bilbo had finally found the retainer contract amongst the personal papers kept in his desk. “‘Whittaker Q. Chubb-Boffin.’ Who under the earth is named such a mouthful?”

“No one!” Bilbo chirped over his shoulder as he kneaded the dough for his saffron buns. Good quality saffron and plenty of it, all the way up in this part of the world: heavens bless those new Southern merchants! “Though he is a hobbit, after all — not a dwarf!”

They were, as usual, in the kitchen. Bilbo had been worried that Thorin’s great, big, temporary bed in the middle of their sitting room would upset whatever usual socializing habits had made up their marriage, resulting in enough awkwardness that they two would never sit and have a chat by themselves. But everyone who entered the royal residence seemed drawn to the kitchen like it was a lodestone, and so even when out of company, Bilbo and Thorin ended up spending a great deal of time in there, together.

“But even for a hobbit, it’s an absurd name,” Thorin claimed, and then he muttered again in wonder: “‘Whittaker Q. Chubb-Boffin…’ What does the ‘Q’ even stand for? You don’t have a ‘Q.’”

“Oh, I don’t know; it’s not as if I’ve met the fellow. Probably it’s just an affectation. And it is not the oddest name I’ve ever heard, not by a long shot! Pretty normal, actually.”

“Normal! What about something like… ‘Basil’? That’s normal.”

“What!” Bilbo gasped and felt his nose go all scrunched. He got his hands out of the dough. “Basil? What kind of a name is ‘Basil’? For a dwarf or a hobbit?”

Thorin’s smile went incredulous. “You’re pulling my leg. Basil has to be the most hobbit-like name there is.”

“No one would name a child Basil, Thorin. I mean, really.”

“But what about Rosemary?” Thorin pressed. “Or Lavender?”

“What about them?”

“They’re plant names. Like Basil. Hobbit names.”

“Yes, indeed. Rosemary and Lavender are good, upstanding hobbit names for good, upstanding hobbit lasses.” Bilbo leaned on the correct names so that Thorin would hear how much better, how much more suitable they sounded.

“For lads, then! Surely Basil would sound fine, on a lad.”

“Oh, no it wouldn’t. Not even a little.”

“Why not? What’s the difference between Rosemary and Lavender and Basil?”

“Rosemary and Lavender are names. Basil is not a name!”

Thorin cocked his head. “Well, what about ‘Herb’? For a lad?”

“Don’t even joke, Thorin.”

So: with the letters posted —

(the ravens seeking Gandalf had returned without spotting him; Thorin had immediately sent out another contingent, with a wider purview)

— there was really nothing for Bilbo to do but try and make the best of his Ereborean home.

And mostly, of late, this meant cleaning! And that cleaning amounted to quite a lot of work.

Bilbo had nothing against cleaning. It was actually how he had spent most of his time in the Shire, in the decade before he’d run off with the dwarves. Bag End was full of endless empty rooms, and Bilbo had never been able to bear the thought of covering up his parents’ beloved furnishings — nor did he ever place them in storage, nor gift or auction anything away.

As such, there was no way to shut up all that unused space, not without ruining the very possessions he wished to preserve. So life was an endless cycle of cleaning Bag End’s many sitting rooms and guest rooms and storerooms and washrooms. Once Bilbo had gotten through them all, the first ones he had tackled would be dusty again.

Here in Erebor, it was a little different.

Nils — who, like Hamfast Gamgee, was more a partner in the running of the residence than a servant — was a manifest expert in the management of households; he’d explained to Bilbo that he had designed and now presided over the affairs and workflow of two other large estates under the Mountain, in addition to Thorin and Bilbo’s apartments.

When Nils had walked Bilbo through all of the household paperwork, he explained that Bilbo kept tight control over the royal housekeeping, even cleaning most of the private rooms himself. But for all his vast experience with cleaning, Bilbo could not imagine doing such a thing now: not with the fatigue from the Forgetting still looming over him like the world’s least useful parasol.

Still, Bilbo insisted on retaining responsibility for his own kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and personal sitting room: the one with The Bed. But in the end, he wound up never needing to touch the thing! Though he had been both dreading and relishing the prospect of gathering up (…and stroking, and smelling, Lady help him) Thorin’s bedsheets, Thorin apparently needed no reminder to tidy his bed himself, making and stripping it as necessary!

“Don’t look so surprised,” Thorin said one morning, watching Bilbo peer down at the bedlinens: fresh and tucked to within an inch of their life. He had clearly noticed Bilbo’s incredulity at finding The Bed so neat. “I can make my own bed perfectly well.”

“I mean no offense,” Bilbo said. “If anything, it’s a compliment. You seem too regal for such a task.”

“You think me too arrogant, more like.”

Bilbo darted his gaze quickly towards Thorin, but he was smiling — only joking, then.

“Well, I never did see you pack up your own bedroll,” Bilbo said, trying to match the mildly ribbing tone of Thorin’s speech. “I half-thought Balin took care of it for you.”

Thorin shook his head and huffed. “Oh, you might easily think such a thing! You were never up early enough to see me do any chores.”

“I seem to recall someone always assigning me that horrid middle watch, so no wonder I never woke up on time…”

In any case!

Even though Bilbo did not need to clean the entirety of the apartments on his own, he still found himself spending his time drifting through them in circuits, again and again and again. He did this by himself. He needed time on his own, and he guessed that Thorin did, too: both because Bilbo was bound to grate on Thorin if they were constantly in each other’s presence, and because Bilbo did, after all, remember what Dwalin had said about needing time to grieve. You couldn’t grieve someone when their ghost was always fussing you while you sat at the kitchen table.

These turns about the residence were tiring, but Bilbo persisted, because he could not escape the feeling that something was missing, that something must be found. There must be some object or sight within these rooms that would prompt a memory, surely! And so he looked and looked: for what, he didn’t know.

He had to remember something.

Sometimes he thought he did. He found himself reaching for a measuring cup in his kitchen without thinking about it, or knowing the names of the books on his tea table without looking at them, or feeling his body move through a chore without needing to be taught, as in the case of the beehives and his honey.

But all of this seemed naught but a growing comfort with the space. It did not soothe that gnawing craving for the perfect word, just out of reach, nor did it affix a picture in his mind, as he could see when he thought about his parents gardening together, or baking seedcakes alone in Bag End.

So that familiarity never came to feel like real remembrance. It felt almost like cheating at a game. And it all meant that coming to such a realization every day — and concentrating so deeply on the task of recognition, and second-guessing his own recollection constantly — only tired Bilbo faster than the fatigue would have done on its own.

--

Still! It was not as if there was nothing charming or precious to be found in his home under the Mountain.

A case in point was formed by a series of little boxes that Bilbo had found all through the royal residence. These boxes were each made of beautifully-wrought silver, and there was one upon the mantle in each room. Bilbo had thought they were nothing but miscellaneous trinket boxes until he had finally opened one, several weeks into his return to the residence, and found it full of matches perfect for lighting fireplaces, pipes, and candles.

You would perhaps not expect such a thing to be a wonder! But in the Shire, each town had its own matchbooker — Hobbiton’s was Mr. Twofoot — who produced everyone’s matches and assembled them into little paper books for portability and convenience. All the same: no matter how many Bilbo bought for himself, he was constantly losing his matchbooks. They were simply too small to be kept track of.

But a matchbox! A box of matches that lived upon the mantelpiece, and never budged, and might be refilled at will! It was such an elegant solution, Bilbo could not believe he hadn’t thought of it before, in Bag End. To encounter such an object here in Erebor, where all the dwarves used flint and tinder…? He was so excited that he plucked the box up and went off to find Thorin immediately to gush.

It was only halfway through his raptures that Bilbo remembered this was just the sort of silly homebody chatter Thorin had held the least amount of patience for, back on their quest. But Thorin’s reaction held no scorn. He did nothing more than gaze down at the matchbox for a moment, and then his eyes were darting back up to meet Bilbo’s, all alight.

“Give me a quarter of an hour,” Thorin said with barely banked excitement, “and then meet me in my workshop. I’ll have something to show you.”

Gamely, Bilbo waited the fifteen minutes Thorin had requested and then made his way to the little forge he had seen during their first tour of the royal apartments. When he arrived, the workshop was mostly dark, and the forge itself was cool, as Thorin had not been working in it much over the course of Bilbo’s recovery.

But directly below the glass skylight in the ceiling, there was a benchtop covered with two-yards’-length of deep blue velvet, all awash in colorless sunlight. It made for a very dramatic stage setting, and Bilbo said as much to Thorin, who was standing there, slightly off to the side.

“Good!” said Thorin. “Then it will be a fitting backdrop as I show you part of your collection. If you liked your matchboxes, then I hope you will also enjoy these.”

And so he went into a room just off the workshop and returned — arranging them upon the velvet one by one — with the most stunning little objects Bilbo had ever seen!

Namely, there was:

     One silver pencil box enameled all over with a cascading rainbow of flourishes, complete with a built-in sharpener;

     One ivory table clock the size of Bilbo’s hand, with a face etched in opalescent mother-of-pearl;

     One pair of scissors shaped like a diving heron: the blades were its beak, the two handles made up its wings, and the pin holding the two halves together formed the bird’s emerald eye;

     One little letter-opener with a ruby- and sapphire-encrusted hilt;

     One rectangular trinket dish fashioned to look like a twilit sky, with lacquer in pink and orange fading into purple and black;

     One wide-toothed comb inlaid with half a dozen shades of polished wood;

     One votive jar made of candy-colored cabochons soldered together with lead, all surrounding a little tea-light candle;

     One hair-weaving set within a brooch, containing locks of black and gold braided behind a glass face, surrounded by matching onyx and topaz jewels;

     One porcelain box shaped like an apple, colored blush and green, opening upon minute silver hinges;

     And finally, one paperweight in the form of a majestic (though extremely fluffy) ram, carved from amber, with face, feet, and horns capped in bossed silver.

“There are many more,” Thorin said. He pulled out a seat for Bilbo next to the table, and then settled into a matching chair alongside his husband. “But these are some of your favorites. Some I made for you myself; some you have picked up in the markets or received as gifts.”

“More even than this?”

“Yes. Far more. They are never all out on display, at any given moment, because — in truth, I find them too distracting.”

“Best in small doses,” Bilbo agreed faintly.

“Usually I set them out for you,” Thorin said in an equally small, confessional tone. “Whichever ones I think will catch your eye, sometimes with a new trinket added, to surprise you. I– haven’t been, recently. I hadn’t wanted you to think you weren’t… remembering the look of our home correctly. Hadn’t wanted to introduce unexpected changes.”

“Oh,” Bilbo said. It was truly a problem he hadn’t thought to worry about, but he could see how the arbitrary arrival and disappearance of such glittering items might be unsettling. “That’s very thoughtful! Thank you.”

He stared at them all, in awe, for a long time. He lifted each up from the velvet. He set them down.

“It’s the colors,” he realized at last. “I must have favored all of these because I liked the many colors.”

Thorin hesitated with his response.

“I had hoped– had hoped you would like the colors,” he said after a moment.

Bilbo noted that: Thorin’s careful use of the present tense, well buried within the rest of the sentence. Thorin was saying, in a fluent use of hobbitish delicacy: Bilbo, I hope you love the colors, right now. I am thinking of the Bilbo-that-is, not the Bilbo-that-was.

Bilbo felt his head tilt from the emotion that idea raised in him.

“I do,” he said, clearing his throat to fight the clench of sentiment there. “They’re all beautiful. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

The brightest colors one encountered routinely in the Shire tended to arrive in the form of flowers, and these were of course temporary — even if you dried and pressed them, the gladioli and the roses and the stargazer lilies would all fade, every one. But the gems and lacquer and enamel here were unfading, permanent. It was foreign. It was appealing.

“You said you made some of these?” Bilbo asked. “Which ones?”

Using the first two fingers of his right hand, Thorin dragged what objects he had made forward, across the velvet. One by one, he claimed them: the pencil box, the knife, the scissors, the dish, the hair brooch, the apple, and the ram.

Bilbo blinked his eyes rapidly. “My, aren’t you modest! Only seven out of ten are your own work! What a show of restraint, O King.”

Thorin, eyes dancing, leaned back and propped up an elbow against the back of his chair in a gesture of blatant self-confidence, and the look upon his face was amused, totally unrepentant.

It was such an attractive look on him that Bilbo simply had to look away. He turned his gaze back to the objects on the velvet. “You made all those matchboxes for me, too, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

Bilbo hummed and said nothing more. Instead, he lifted a hand to take up the hair-weaving brooch on the table before him. It was the only item that held any known significance to him beside the vivid colors that united the whole collection. The hair inside it was obviously his own and Thorin’s, braided together into a wide, flat weaving. When Bilbo turned it over, however, he realized there was no pin or clasp upon the back.

“I thought this would be a brooch,” Bilbo echoed this thought aloud to Thorin, brushing his thumb over the bare expanse of silver at the back of the trinket.

“Aye,” Thorin said. “I made it with such a thing in mind. You explained mourning brooches to me, years ago. You’d gone back to the Shire to retrieve what was especially precious to you, from Bag End, and you brought back the brooch containing your parents’ hair, woven together.”

“Oh, that’s here? In the Mountain?” Bilbo hadn’t even thought to worry over where such a thing might have wandered off to.

“You keep it in your jewelry box, the one in your closet.”

“Good, good.” Bilbo loosened the instinctive squeeze he had taken on the un-brooch in his palm as if it were a stand-in for the true mourning brooch from his parents. He knew he would go off to look for it, once this session with Thorin was done.

“You told me that to set a loved one’s hair under glass and metal was an expression of grief, in the Shire,” Thorin went on. “A sign of lasting affection after loss. But you had already given me a lock of your hair, as you’ve said hobbitish lovers do, too, and– Well. I liked the idea of preserving it, like this, with a lock of mine. I liked the look of it even better, once I had finished it. You were cross with me, though, when I gave it to you.”

“Why on earth?” Bilbo laughed a little. “It’s unorthodox, I grant, but it’s beautiful. I like the look of it, too, you know. It’s good luck that we both have hair that looks the way it does!”

Because the contrast between the colors made both look better, if Bilbo dared say so himself. The darkness of Thorin’s hair made Bilbo’s appear a warm, ruddy gold, rather the plain old dishwater color you might find upon two-thirds of the heads in the Shire. And the depth and variety of color in Bilbo’s hair made the black of Thorin’s look as deep and soft as charcoal, cut through with strands not grey, but rather a shining, bright-star white.

“I agree,” said Thorin. “But for dwarrow, the cutting of hair is complicated. It’s restricted according to your guild, your family, your– mistakes.” He cleared his throat. “I trimmed my beard for the loss of Erebor almost all my life, and that was an expression of mourning, too, in its own right.”

Thorin reached out and brushed his fingers against the un-brooch, so that Bilbo could feel the heat of his palm before Thorin withdrew again.

Thorin continued, “But to have given you those little parings of my beard from such a ritual would have been a perverse, off-putting gift. For you to display them would have been abhorrent. Likewise, wearing a lock of hair like this in public would be an affront to any dwarf who saw it.”

“Oh!” Bilbo clapped a hand immediately over the glass face, trying to hide the little hair weaving even though no one else was in the room. “And you being King!”

“Aye, exactly.” Thorin chuckled. “That is why you were irritated with me, when I gave it to you. But as I told you then, it has no fastener, so you can’t wear it out, even by mistake, to wind up offending anyone. And anyway, I might have offended you with it, too. I know other Shirefolk would frown on such a thing. Neither of us is dead, after all, and here I was, making you a morbid little gift as if we were.”

Bilbo hummed at that, tilting the un-brooch in his hands so that it caught the light, glinting this way and that.

Academically speaking, there was an unwholesomeness to it; lovers’ hair should only tangle on top of pillowcases and in fields of clover and wherever else the business of love-making was managed. It was only when they were both silent in the grave that their hair should entwine like this: neat and under glass, to be offered to some grieving child or heir. That was what Bilbo’s Shire upbringing was telling him, at least.

“It should make my skin crawl,” Bilbo allowed. “But Lady help me, it doesn’t. I like it very much. It’s romantic.”

“If you don’t think too hard about it?” Thorin guessed, sounding faintly amused.

“I’m thinking very hard about everything, these days,” Bilbo said dryly. “But beautiful things make for a nice change. You can just accept them as beautiful and try to think nothing more of it.”

Thorin tilted his head to the side. A look of familiar hesitation crept onto his face as he stared down at the little selection of Bilbo’s curios.

“Another personal question for me?” Bilbo asked. At Thorin’s startled expression, he clarified, “You– Remember when you introduced me to our rooms? You said that you wanted to ask me a personal question. You have the same look about you now. I suppose it’s been that sort of afternoon: the type for exchanging, um. Intimacies.”

Thorin smiled — perhaps at Bilbo’s nervy hesitation over exchanging intimacies — but then his face went pensive.

“Lately, I have been trying to put myself in your position,” he confessed. “Imagining what it would be like if I lost all of my memories, since our quest.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows and grimaced. That version of Thorin would go mad as a March hare, to find himself married to me.

“If you had shown me these things —”

Here Thorin made an open-handed gesture, encompassing all the treasures on the velvet before them.

“— many of which I have made with my own hands, from the riches of my reclaimed kingdom…  I don’t know that I would have been able to see them as beautiful.

“I think I would have resented them, because to me they would still have been lost. I would not remember making them, and so even if I held them in my hands, and felt the craft in them, the stoneflesh of them — they would have felt lost to me, taken from me. I would still think myself doomed to find myself back in Ered Luin… to wake up there again, with nothing. It’s a strange sensation, to think of myself as I lived back then. To think of that Thorin living now.”

Bilbo hummed in recognition. It was a better metaphor than any Ori had suggested, back when he was still pumping Bilbo for information regarding the Forgetting.

The idea of another Thorin walking about — traveling through time to view the things the current Thorin took for granted — spoke to an understanding of the way that Bilbo felt split in half, as if there were two Bilbos: one from the distant past, who had been dragged into the present, and another Bilbo who had only just been living with Thorin but who had suddenly disappeared, perhaps to return. And perhaps not.

“You would feel like you didn’t deserve any of this,” Bilbo remarked, fussing with the velvet-covered tabletop with the edge of a fingernail. “Hadn’t really achieved it.”

He turned to see Thorin watching him.

“Aye. Sometimes I feel undeserving of the life I have here, even though we worked so hard to build it.”

Bilbo’s nail scraped deeper into the velvet at that casual we, that inclusion of Bilbo himself in work that he could not remember doing and would not be able to accomplish now, not with his current diminished skill and presence.

But Thorin went on, “After so much hardship, it is difficult not to see the plenty of Erebor as–  heavy. More complicated than it is.”

Here Thorin sighed and smiled at the same time; it made for a curious combination of mannerisms that Bilbo could feel himself observing sharply, eating up with a hungry, vigilant gaze.

“To see these objects through your eyes, to see them as beautiful and painless…” Thorin told him, “for a moment, it changes how I see them, too.”

Bilbo’s eyebrows twitched. Now, that didn’t sound wholly good… Did it seem as if Bilbo was being careless of these items? Not attending to the weight and effort of their creation? He had only just seen them for the first time. He wasn’t sure how better to value them.

Bilbo cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said lightly. “I know I never wanted for anything in my childhood, but I do try not to feel entitled–”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Thorin said quickly, his tone reassuring. “I can see why you would think that’s what I meant, but it isn’t. The way you interact with my work, it helps remove some of the– the freight, to see you enjoy these things without worry of whether or not you should have them. I don’t begrudge you your easiness, Bilbo, and I know that you aren’t easy about everything.”

Bilbo’s fingernails were really doing a number on the velvet tablecloth at this point, so he put his hands in his lap and nodded.

“Bilbo.” Thorin’s grave voice made Bilbo look up at him. “Truly, I did not mean to imply any entitlement. There is no secret, hidden meaning to my speech. I say what I mean. You have — You had come to learn that, over the course of living with us dwarrow for so long.”

Bilbo’s incredulity burst out as a bark of laughter. “Thorin, bless you, but everyone has hidden meaning to their speech. You either don’t notice it, or you deliberately choose to ignore it. I’m not good at that, at ignoring what I’m not supposed to hear.”

“Then I will not ask you to ignore it,” Thorin countered. “If you hear something in my words that troubles you, I would beg you ask me about it. You’re right that I have nowhere near your skill with words, and so I don’t doubt you may catch me implying things I don’t mean. All I ask is that you give me the chance to clarify, and to trust the honesty of my clarification.”

Bilbo shifted his shoulders back, trying to rid himself of the tension he could feel settling there.

“Do you think I won’t be honest with you?” Thorin asked.

Bilbo scoffed, unable to keep in his irritation. No, believe me, he said in his thoughts. I know you can be very honest about your dissatisfaction with me.

“We used to share things,” said Thorin. “I understand you don’t remember our marriage, but I want to help bear the burdens you carry. You are helping me, by looking at these objects and loving them. It’s that easy; you help me just by being here. I would like to do the same for you.”

Bilbo cleared his throat. There was a sweat breaking out upon his forehead.

“When–” he tried, but then he had to stop.

The words were so difficult. Shockingly difficult! His throat grated over them like sandpaper, trying desperately to make them come out smoother, more polished. The roughness was born, Bilbo supposed, of dread that he would say the wrong thing, and not helped by a reluctance to give any voice to the subject in the first place.

Still, Bilbo forced himself to speak, hoping that it would all come out in a rush. Instead, he had to endure it when each word was scraped from his stomach, slow as anything.

“When you say that I am being easy, I hear: you should take care not to be difficult.” He mined the words out of himself, chip by chip. “When you say we were honest with each other before I had my Forgetting, I hear: right now you are being dishonest.”

And of course Thorin looked surprised, because he was a dwarf; Bilbo could not have expected anything else. But then he looked uncomfortable, too. “That is not–”

“I know it is not what you said,” Bilbo cut him off. “But it is what I hear you telling me, and I think it may be what you mean, even if you do not intend to say it. Can you understand?”

Thorin was quiet for a moment, and Bilbo fished out his handkerchief, his fingers tangling in those little chains he had apparently added to all of his jacket pockets. Once it was out, he used the fabric to dab at his forehead, which was now unpleasantly damp.

“I take your point, Bilbo,” Thorin said at last. He spoke slowly, too, as if he were doing his own laborious mining of words. “What I mean is this: I don’t think you are being dishonest. That is a rough and inaccurate word. But– I do think you are shouldering too much, and hiding things because, as you say, you don’t want to be difficult. That isn’t dishonesty. I know hiding is sometimes how you show care and respect to others. But things can’t always be easy, and right now they are difficult for you. But ‘difficult’ does not have to mean ‘bad.’”

It feels bad, Bilbo thought but did not say. He rubbed the flat of his hand over his face.

On the road, Bilbo had made himself difficult to the dwarves; not intentionally, but because he did not know how to travel well, nor how to make himself useful. The luxury here in Erebor was, by comparison, indeed an easier existence, as Thorin had suggested earlier. So it could not help but chafe at Bilbo, that he was still so difficult here, for no reason and with no real recourse that he could see.

“You say you’ve been thinking very hard about everything,” Thorin said into Bilbo’s silence. “About my words and what I say to you, yes, I can see that. But what else? Would you tell me about it?”

Bilbo’s nose wrinkled in automatic rejection, but he forced himself to be more generous. “I would like to, but it’s hard. I am still too used to living alone, I suppose.”

“You have not been living alone,” Thorin corrected, not unkindly.

Bilbo could not hold in an irritated sigh. “You know what I mean–”

“Could you try?” Thorin persisted. “To tell me what you’ve been worrying about?”

Bilbo pulled his whole face in tight, his mouth and brows and eyes clenching as he tried to bully some focus from himself. Bilbo could try. He was trying. He would. He forced his expression to relax.

“This place,” he started, “is different from the road, and it is different from my home.”

Thorin frowned at home, but Bilbo did not want to be interrupted again and lose his momentum. He continued quickly:

“It’s all so much — bigger, than my life in the Shire. I don’t know what to do here. Who to be. I spend a lot of time trying to remember, and guessing at it when I do not. And I’m somehow always on the back foot.”

Thorin raised his eyebrows and blew out a breath from his nose.

“You guess well,” he acknowledged. “You have had great skill at reading others, for as long as I’ve known you. But you don’t always need to guess. Sometimes you can ask all of us for help.”

Bilbo had needed to ask for help on the quest; he’d had no other choice. But the dwarves had not sympathized with his questions and discomfort then, and so it continued to make him feel badly now. The fact remained that it was always easier to guess, always less painful than asking outright only to have your wishes disregarded or mocked.

He still hadn’t responded when Thorin went on to coax, “Bilbo, you’re good at this. You are good at your life here.”

“Once, I was,” Bilbo made himself grate out. “It’s not the same.”

Thorin opened his mouth, but Bilbo held up a hand — and then a laugh escaped him, inappropriately timed.

It was only that Bilbo knew this gesture, with the hand, was the just sort of gesture Fili or Kili had made to the other, when they were play-battling at camp and one of them needed a breather.

They’d been learning swordplay, Dwalin had told Bilbo back then, because swords were neither of the boys’ first weapon of choice, but they were still necessary to master.

You ought to join ‘em, Dwalin had said. His mouth had been full at the time — Bilbo remembered that, alongside his distaste at the sight. You could learn something.

Bilbo had declined, of course, and so the only thing he’d learned, as he watched, was that gesture of the hand. It might even have been Iglishmek, but there was something deeper and more instinctual to it, too: Stop. Respite.  

And he had used it now in Thorin’s workshop because he really did need to stop. He could not believe how physically taxing it was to speak on this subject. He was sweating so hard it was almost as if he were sword fighting in truth, and not sitting still, in perfect comfort.

But slowly, Thorin took the hand that Bilbo had raised and turned it so that it was lying flat between Thorin’s own. He began to pull soothingly at Bilbo’s fingers in a gentle massage.

Bilbo stared down at the sight. He was attacked by a sort of double vision, witnessing both Thorin’s consolation now, which had become so reliable and enticing over the past several weeks, and Thorin’s coldness on the quest, which — perversely — had felt just as constant and often just as consuming, just as ensnaring.

“I only meant to say,” Thorin started, looking down at their mingled fingers just as Bilbo was, “when you learn more, you’ll feel better. We’ll take it slow and continue on as we have.”

Quick as a bounding rabbit, Thorin bent his head to kiss the back of Bilbo’s hand, and then he let go. He stood himself up and started collecting all of Bilbo’s little baubles, to return them to their places in his storeroom.

“Thank you for showing me all of– all of these,” Bilbo said automatically, distantly. His head was spinning. “And for making them, creating them for me.”

“There’s more,” Thorin promised with a smile. And, well–  Bilbo was sure there was.

--

Thorin had said Bilbo would feel better once he’d learned more about his life in Erebor, and Bilbo supposed that might very well be true. It did, at least, accord with the image Bilbo held of himself as he’d existed before his parents’ death. He had been very proactive, back then — and curious, and clever. Life had seemed bigger and more friendly, at least!

But once his parents had died, more and more seemed to overwhelm and overtake him. Bilbo found himself wanting to know less and less. His life shrank. Grief wound up being a lesson that proved learning was not all it was cracked up to be.

Well, it only went to show that Gandalf had been right, on that first night with the dwarves: Bilbo in his middle age had indeed gone as riskless, as unimaginative, and as adhered to his home as a drying coat of white paint. But now he was out in the wide world, just as Gandalf said he should be, and so now Bilbo would have to act like it. Hopefully the paint was dry, and he could start decorating afresh, with all the color of his new life in Erebor.

He began with the project that he had first spotted out in the ballroom: the vast spill of papers about the trade negotiations with Dale and the Southern merchants. Bilbo had already made sense, as much as he could, of the household accounts. He understood the apartments’ cleaning schedules and budgets and general rhythms well enough, by that point.

The matter of his responsibilities as Consort were another matter. But he supposed he should thank his past self, for laying out a prime example in the plainest way possible, in such a manner as he could not possibly miss: strewn about the biggest room in his new home. All that remained was for him to apply himself and learn.

So it was, that after dressing one morning, Bilbo approached the array of documents in the ballroom with ginned-up nerve. Everything was laid out under the bright sunlight in neat stacks, fanned out across maybe five yards of space, just as it had been that first day back in the royal residence. A bit dusty, perhaps; truly untouched.

Well!

Bilbo could not imagine he’d fully understand the problem just from these papers, but Thorin had asked him to learn, and here was a perfect place to start. Bilbo clasped his hands and bobbed up and down on his feet twice, to gather some momentum. Then he leaned forward, and tried to figure out which stack he ought to read first.

--

It was hours before he really resurfaced.

“Bilbo!”

Bilbo was jolted from his work when he heard his name echo through the ballroom. It had come from Thorin, of course, who was walking towards him through the twilight gloom, carrying — of all things! — a swaying lantern aloft in one hand, even though he was indoors.

“Well met, weary traveler!” Bilbo could not help but laugh, sitting up from where he had been hunched over his notes. He didn’t bother to stand, since it would take some doing to pick his way through the papers he had rearranged all around him. “Lost your way in the woods, have you?”

The expression upon Thorin’s face, cast in dramatic shadow from his silly-looking lantern, looked so deliberately unimpressed that he must have been at least a little amused.

“You’re losing the light,” the King huffed. He drew up to the edge of Bilbo’s great circle of scraps and fragments.

Bilbo looked around him and saw that Thorin was, of course, correct. He hadn’t noticed it as he was working, but he was now surrounded by a wide spread of rearranged papers and empty plates from the meals that had been brought to him over the course of the day — though he’d hardly noticed the sustenance as he ate it.

Now the white parchment of the scattered documents was rosy under the light of the dying sun, sinking in from the skylight. Soon all would be unreadable: a great change from the bright light of this morning. Bilbo hadn't thought to bring any candles or lamps with him into the ballroom, and so Thorin's lantern was perhaps not so absurd after all.

“Will you finish up soon?” Thorin prompted, when Bilbo said nothing. “Perhaps for a bedtime treat?”

Bilbo laughed again. “What, are you trying to stretch my seven meals a day to eight?”

Thorin made a shrugging sort of gesture with the lantern. The movement threw long, swinging shadows onto Bilbo’s papers and discarded dishes.

Thorin said, “Well, we must take care with your health. Recovery is hungry work.”

“It’s hardly work at all,” Bilbo muttered, thinking of all the restless resting he had been doing lately. But then he gestured about, expansively, to all the papers. “This, though. What a mess!”

But he knew, even as he said it, that this was not quite true.

The notes were not messy. They had been organized in a manner which Bilbo had not initially been able to understand, but really, the information was more thorough than Bilbo had expected. In fact, everything that might possibly be necessary to understand the negotiations was already there.

There was a copy of the trade arrangement between Dale and the Southern merchants, a project upon which the Bilbo-that-was appeared to have consulted. Those proceedings seemed to have run quite smoothly, according to Bilbo’s notes.

Then there was a draft of the trade agreement that would hopefully include Erebor, too, and this document and its negotiations were knottier by far. The text itself was of course incomplete and unsigned by the parties, but the proposed rates and schedules and wholesale stock were written out nonetheless. The items on offer were coming in from the far South, lured up by the new wares and vast wealth on offer from the reclaimed Erebor. The Southern merchants had offered some sample goods —

(Bilbo recalled the fabric from Tilda’s glittering yellow gown, and he had of course already started working with the vanilla, and saffron, and dangerous caraway)

— but trade was not yet in full swing. The routes were only freshly negotiated and the full scope of the supply and demand had yet to be determined, as Erebor’s participation was still unsettled. All the same, Bilbo found himself very covetous of the many rare and unheard-of goods on offer: mustard and pepper; figs, dates, and sugar; cork and ebony; sandalwood, balsam, and eucalyptus — plus all manner of dyes, seeds, metals, fabrics, and recipes. It was nothing that Erebor or Dale needed, as far as Bilbo could tell, but everything sounded quite desirable nonetheless.

Bilbo had also found the minutes taken during each meeting of the talks, as well as a timeline that documented the exact dates and times at which these meetings took place and what amendments to the agreement that had been made during each one. There were accounts, too, of what trade was already occurring between the Mountain and Dale… as well as a carefully researched report of trade opportunities to be engaged in the Kingdom of Rohan, intelligence presumably gathered in case all commerce with Dale fell through entirely.

Bilbo was even pleased to see that the Bilbo-that-was had made written note of the sort of personal details about the negotiators that would have gone purely whispered about, in the Shire. Gossip was meant to be carried around only in your head, after all; writing did not hold much appeal amongst hobbits. But Bilbo had never been good at managing all the little details that governed his neighbors’ interactions, and so it was a relief to see that he had written it all down in Erebor, where the stakes were much higher.

Every participant in the talks had their own deck of details. There were the usual particulars that any diplomat would need to remember: the names and ages of the negotiators, any spouses or children, where they all lived and how they made their money. But there were also the sorts of minutiae that it paid to keep an eye on, lest any of it raise trouble later.

Bilbo read, for instance, that the dwarven head of the goldsmithing guild liked very much to play at cards — but he seemed to be a talented gambler, and had no outstanding debts or enemies that the Bilbo-that-was had managed to sniff out.

The dwarven guildsmaster for the weavers, meanwhile, was of a melancholic disposition, and so sometimes needed to miss meetings because of that illness, rather than out of malice or caprice. The guildsmaster for the carpenters tended to quarrel publicly with her brothers, and so had a reputation for a short temper and a love of drama.

Of the menfolk, the representative of the Dalish crown — an advisor to King Bard — had a son who was often in trouble with the nightwatch and needed to be bailed from gaol regularly. The mannish representative of the Southern merchants had entered into a flirtation with a local woman, and if it evolved into courtship, he might not return to Umbar when the talks were through.

Yes, everyone was documented in Bilbo’s papers quite thoroughly... near obsessively, as a matter of fact. It seemed all eccentricities and weaknesses had been so carefully accounted for, that Bilbo might have set the entire Shire alight with all this gossip. But he granted to himself: most hobbits would have thought it too much work by half to keep written documentation of other people’s secrets!

(But if, in Bag End — Bilbo mused — he had let himself write down all the rumors he heard, he might have actually remembered them all, and therefore spared himself a reputation for being careless and unneighborly.)

The only thing missing from all these notes, really, was any sort of actual solution to the negotiations.

“Now, Thorin: here’s a question you might help me with,” Bilbo said, before his husband could start badgering him into leaving his work behind once more. “Why are the parties so lopsided?”

Thorin’s brow lowered, just a touch.

“How do you mean?” he rumbled. “What parties?”

“Well!” Bilbo took in a big breath and settled his hands upon his knees. He was still kneeling, after all, in the middle of all the official proceedings and gossip and spying that the Bilbo-that-was had gathered together.

“As far as I can tell, there are two camps: the mannish contingent, and the Ereborean dwarves. But the numbers in each party are nowhere close to equal. The party of men numbers only three, and they aren’t even all from Dale. We have a representative for the guilds in Dale, a representative of the Dalish crown, and a representative for the merchants from the South, who’s from Umbar, wherever that is. Meanwhile, the dwarven party has fifteen guildsmasters at the table! Fifteen!” Bilbo threw his hands up. “Plus me!”

Thorin still looked confused, but now it was tinged with incredulity. “We have 68 guilds under the Mountain, in total. And all of them must be represented in some way, because if we get access to the Southern trade, those will be the materials they may elect to use and the goods they must compete with. You yourself agreed with me that we’d found a good, well-rounded selection to send to the table, who would bargain well on the behalf of all who were not included.”

“Yes!” Bilbo exclaimed. “I don’t doubt that cutting a crowd of guildsmasters over three-score down to a mere fraction of the original number felt like quite an achievement, at the time! But it still leaves the men outnumbered more than five to one. They must have their own guildsmasters, too, mustn’t they? Of the sort who might lead Yorick and the other builders?”

“Aye,” said Thorin slowly, like Bilbo still wasn’t thinking clearly. “But they’d already agreed to their own contract with the merchants from the South. We wouldn’t ask them to reopen those negotiations just for us; that would not be reasonable. And anyway, Erebor is much bigger than Dale and Laketown combined. We have more people and more commerce by far.”

When Bilbo’s skeptical look didn’t budge, Thorin’s tone grew only more defensive.

“The men agreed the terms of the discussion,” the King said, planting his feet. “They agreed knowing in advance what parties would be included.”

“Well, yes, Thorin. I’m sure they did agree.” Bilbo huffed. “I’m sure they would agree to any number of things — you’re their much, much wealthier neighbor, who could decide you don’t need to trade with Dale at all, if it came to it!”

“Much wealthier!” Thorin repeated, laughing in shock. “Our kingdom is still in ruins!”

“Ruins!” Bilbo did some repeating of his own. He waved an arm at the huge, dim, immaculate ballroom surrounding them. “Now, I know the sovereign must live in especial luxury, but really, Thorin. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the whole Mountain is in ruins.”

Thorin opened and closed his mouth. After a moment, he said, “If you’d seen it at the beginning…”

“No, no, I’m sure I’d agree with you that it’s come a long way,” Bilbo said quickly, and then he wrinkled his nose. “But perhaps that is part of the issue. You’ve come so far that the scale of the progress may be hard to see — you know, from the inside. And I remember you all telling me on the road that it hasn’t been easy going for dwarves, these last hundred years or so.

“But–” Bilbo hesitated now, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. “But. I also think Erebor is in rather a good position, at this point, comparatively: dragon gone, clean-up well underway, plenty of trade coming in and out. And from the notes, here, it sounds like Dale wasn’t in sterling shape before you all got here, and when —” (He scanned his papers, briefly, to doublecheck the name) “— Laketown was destroyed, everyone needed to rebuild Esgaroth on land. So now I’d imagine it rankles the men, a bit, to have to depend on you so.”

Thorin was frowning, and Bilbo felt the old anxious suspicion — familiar from the quest — that he was not winning Thorin over to his side.

“And, well,” Bilbo continued, “sometimes I think it pays to be obliging to folks who are worse off than you. Dignity even in entitlement, eh? You have a lot more than them, and much of what they have relies on your generosity. My own father used to have a saying: ‘for if unto anyone much is given, much of them shall be expected.’ It’s about being gracious because you can afford it. …And, um. And that sort of thing.”

Bilbo cleared his throat, finishing his thought a bit feebly.

Thorin’s intense frown had not shifted, but the very stillness of his expression seemed to indicate, now, how seriously he was thinking it over. At last, he asked, “Do you really think that’s the issue?”

“Yes, I would wager so.” Bilbo looked down and began to shuffle some of his papers about unnecessarily, feeling a bit brazen to be speaking so authoritatively on the matter.

He kept going: “I think the men are probably trying to get back their own however they think they can, in whatever manner they think they can get away with. The merchants and Dale came to their own agreement in hardly any time at all, but their talks with Erebor have dragged on for months. It looks to me like they’re observing how long it takes the dwarven guildsmasters and I to come to any agreement on our end, and then delaying the next step of the proceedings almost exactly twice as long from their side — only to go ahead and give you exactly what you asked for in the first place! It reads like an etiquette manual entry on passive aggression! Something a bit similar happened with the Bolgers (old money, you understand) and the Burrowes, on the matter of–”

“–of the land sale, yes, with the wildflower meadow they were both pretending they didn’t want,” Thorin finished distractedly, and Bilbo blinked to have the hobbitish story summed up so succinctly by a Dwarfking, who was exactly the type of personage Bilbo would assume might forget meadows even existed unless they were needed as the site of some pitched battle.

But Thorin was still frowning. 

“We — you and I,” Thorin clarified. “Before your Forgetting, we had assumed that the delay was stemming from an old dislike of dwarrow. You’d seen us encounter that, on our quest. The Big Folk generally distrust us, as a people; they think we’re greedy, and so they don’t like to give us our way. That’s what you were trying to work through, with all these notes. Trying to find a way in with these people.” He gestured to the wide spread of information Bilbo had spent the day re-sorting.

Bilbo’s jaw dropped open with a click, and he looked back down at all that reconnaissance in a fluster, feeling simultaneously that his face was flaming bright red while all of his blood was draining out of it.

Thorin snorted humorlessly. “And it’s a hard thing, to be told that we are so fortunate, and in such an honored and entitled position now, when the past century has been spent bowing and scraping to make my people seem useful, and harmless, and pitiable to men not so different from those in Dale. As if that sort of sustained insult could be waved away by having a mountain and a bit of gold.”

This made Bilbo feel worse, feel sick. It had never occurred to him that the source of the conflict might be– be discrimination. Prejudice, even, on the part of the menfolk, and an unwillingness to accept that sort of disdain on the part of the dwarves!

He had just assumed that no right-thinking folk would be so hateful, and Bard had seemed right-thinking enough when they had met. Bilbo swallowed down a nauseous churn of shame.

“I’m sorry!” he blurted as quickly as he could. “I didn’t even — No, of course, I’m sure you’re right. I’m so sorry to have– And obviously, you would know much better than I! I’m sorry that’s– happened to you. In the past. And that I was so thoughtless about it.”

“You’re not being thoughtless,” assured Thorin, just as immediately.

At that, Bilbo felt a spark of relief. He flexed his face out of habit, feeling the need to exorcise some of his anxiety. The King looked a bit amused at this, which Bilbo hoped was a good sign.

Thorin then continued on in a more rueful tone: “You may, in fact, be examining the problem now without any of the predispositions that I have doubtless handed off to you, during our time together. Nothing wrong with looking at something with fresh eyes.”

Still, Bilbo thought: it had been silly to think he could solve a problem that the Bilbo-that-was had struggled with for so long. Sillier still to think he could do it without giving a thought to how dwarves were esteemed in the world, which he did vaguely remember was ‘not highly.’

Foolish, small-minded Bilbo.

Thorin sighed and glanced back down at the stacks of paper, himself.

“You are right, though,” he mused, “that we are indeed always getting our way, in the end. And the menfolk could’ve just kept direct trade of these goods all to themselves, if they truly loathed our kind so much. And it would make them less dependent on us; you are right on that front, as well.” Thorin paused for a moment. “And by the Maker, we’ve been making no progress by assuming it’s mannish prejudice. The negotiations are taking too long by far, and it can’t go on this way, especially with your memory in such disorder. We must ask the Dalish contingent about this, outright.”

“Oh, don’t do that!” Bilbo said immediately, but then remembered that he had only just thought himself so foolish for sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong. He shook his head and said nothing more.

“Why not?” Thorin asked, and when Bilbo hesitated, he pressed: “Please, say your piece; I would hear it.”

Bilbo rubbed roughly over his face, feeling as if he was doing nothing but digging himself a bigger pit.

“I’m sorry, but– If you ask outright if they’re delaying out of p-prejudice, Thorin, or if it’s just that they’re insulted by being outnumbered, they might play at offense — or even actually be offended! — and then you’d be stuck with it. You might be right, in the end, that they’re just being hateful towards you and all dwarves. And perhaps it’s important to be right about that, and have their disrespect declared outright. I wouldn’t know! But that still leaves the chance that negotiations will be over, and the Mountain will have come out of this with nothing.”

Bilbo closed his mouth and hoped he had uttered no insult. Oh, he had so little experience with prejudice, himself! Whenever he had been made to feel lesser, it had always been so clearly an objection to his own personality, his demeanor, his failures to remember the quirks of his neighbors and his oddities in comparison to the standards of the dwarves: an objection to Bilbo.

That was what had been so funny about the Company finding him so soft. Bilbo had never been good enough at being a hobbit to be liked by the people of Hobbiton — but he was much too good at it for the dwarves to feel easy around him, either.

He wondered why the Ereboreans had put up with it, him marrying Thorin. It was bad enough to have a Consort who had Forgotten, but even before that: there was so much he didn’t know about dwarven life, dwarven suffering! How had he learned to advocate for them, these past seven years? Could he manage to learn it again?

He was shaken from his distraction by an obliquely frustrated noise coming from Thorin.

“Why not just be direct?” the King groused. He tossed out a hand towards the papers, the list of men included in the negotiations. “Why not just say they find the process unfair? It makes no sense! I can understand why you’d want to hide a prejudice. After the life I’ve led, I find it hard, myself, to be easy around menfolk. But I’m wise enough to try and think my way out of any distrust, and when I cannot: yes, I try to hide it. But to say nothing over an insult? To stay silent and stew over it? What end does that serve?

“It’s the whole reason we included our guildsmasters in the first place: to be transparent about whose needs must be accommodated, and to give everyone a place from which to speak freely. The same was allotted to the men: one for the crown, one for their guilds, and one for the foreign merchants themselves. We were trying to account for all stakeholders.”

Bilbo shrugged helplessly.

He had nothing to say that he hadn’t already said. Dale was the weaker party; their numbers reflected that. And though neither party could fully trust the other, Dale would have very little leverage if Erebor acted ungraciously. The menfolk perhaps should have gone about their pettiness — and it did seem they were being petty, even if they were not being prejudiced — a bit more skillfully, but Bilbo could understand very well why they wouldn’t speak up and hash it out in the open.

“They must think the risk is too great,” was what he said aloud. “They have a lot to lose and a lot to gain. I think maybe that’s forcing them to act a little… well, hobbitishly.”

“Very well, then,” said Thorin. “I’ll send out a spy to find out what’s wrong.”

“Oh, don’t–!” Bilbo made to repeat himself and then gusted out a frustrated breath. “…You can do whatever you want. But I would just–” He pressed his palms down into the air in front of his chest. Iglishmek: walk carefully. “I would just recommend caution, perhaps. If you don’t want to make accusations, I wouldn’t — wouldn’t go with subterfuge, either! Just–”

He took a moment to puzzle over next steps. Thorin watched with silent patience.

“You might, for instance,” Bilbo said, as slowly as if he were signing something more complicated in Iglishmek, “ask if the men would like to… flesh out their numbers, and see if that helps. Or, you might ask King Bard privately what concessions might be made, or what worked so well when it was only Dale in talks with the merchants. It seems he stands on no ceremony with us, and so he might tell you exactly how to sweeten the pot for the negotiations. That might be a bridge too far, if you still think it likely they’re just being hateful. Only– Only I would nonetheless stress diplomacy and friendship, at this time.”

When he chanced a look up at Thorin, Bilbo expected the King to be standing there, lost in thought again; perhaps his brow would be even more deeply furrowed in skepticism. But instead, Thorin was looking down at Bilbo with intense affection. It was unexpected enough that Bilbo startled, a little, and then felt silly for it.

“No, of course that is what you would recommend,” Thorin murmured. “Because you are wise, and there’s a reason you are the one who treats with our allies first and foremost. Your counsel is good. We have, in truth, had no proof that this is the old sort of prejudice, so what you’ve said is very helpful. I cannot believe you gleaned all this from only these notes.”

Bilbo heaved a breath. He understood then that the test was through, and he had passed, more or less.

Oh, but– that was a bit of an unkind thought, wasn’t it? It was not Thorin who had been testing him. In fact, both Thorin and the Bilbo-that-was had seemed sure this was a tough problem perhaps never to be solved. And yet Bilbo — him, the Bilbo who had Forgotten! — had been able to cut through the morass, all the same.

So the King was not angry with him, even if they had disagreed, and he might even wind up taking Bilbo’s advice! Bilbo mashed his lips together to keep from smiling too obviously; the trouble with the talks was not yet resolved, after all. But Bilbo wasn’t used to providing insight on anything more difficult than an obscure line of poetry, the sort of thing that had never been much appreciated in Hobbiton!

“Well,” he said to Thorin. “I was bound to notice something useful, since I have been at it all day.”

“Then you really must have a treat!” With that, Thorin held out a hand to help Bilbo up.

When he stood, Bilbo’s knees cracked something awful, and he almost sank right back down from the buzzing ache that shuddered through his legs.

“And remind me never to do that again,” Bilbo gasped, hobbling forward to take Thorin’s arm. “Or at least make me find some cushions first! Kneeling on the floor, for hours and hours... What was I thinking? By my soles. No, I am not doing that again!”

Chapter Text

Given Bilbo’s somewhat-success in reacquainting himself with the negotiations over mannish trade, the obligation– the opportunity to learn even more about his work as Consort seemed unavoidable. It was in this way that Bilbo found himself talked into visiting his state rooms in the Middle Galleries, where the Bilbo-that-was had conducted most of his royal work.

This excursion was to be paired with Bilbo’s first official appearance at the Throne since his accident; he was to stand in attendance while the King heard the public appeals of the kingdom, dispensing justice and settling disputes. Thorin was at this very moment preparing for said airing of petitions alongside Balin and Dwalin and Gimli. That left Verthandi, as Bilbo’s apprentice, to be his companion whilst visiting his own royal office, with Ori alongside.

“Do you really have such a large role in the running of the Kingdom?” Bilbo asked Ori as they approached the Consort’s state rooms. “I don’t mean to sound skeptical! I am sure you can do the work. It’s only that you were so excited to work with the Ereborean archives — even I remember you talking about that!”

“Oh, I’ll have ages to hole myself up in the library later,” Ori said with a scoff. “Once you and Thorin feel fully secure amongst the Court, I can go pursue the archival sciences and no one will miss me. But my whole life, I’ve always wanted to be where the action is; it’s why I brought myself along on the quest in the first place, and seeing as how my Mastery will be in information management, I’m only going where I’m needed most. There is no one under the Mountain in greater need of information management than you and Thorin!”

“‘Information management’?” Bilbo repeated. “If you don’t mind my saying, that sounds more like Nori’s sort of work.”

Ori laughed. “Well, we are brothers! And he’s working on your behalf, too. But I’m what you might call ‘front of house;’ Nori is covering your back.”

And with that, Ori gestured them past a pair of guards, who opened a set of double doors.

The first room that they entered was large: even taller than it was wide. Rays of light shone down from the towering ceiling, and when Bilbo peered upwards, he could discern a system of mirrors that carried sunshine down into the space from some unseen window. The beams of this reflected daylight were supplemented by the glow of small lamps populating a host of desks that were arrayed throughout the room in clusters. Each desk was wide, and most were tidy, with calendars and note paper corralled across their surfaces.

The set-up on each worktop was not so different from his own writing desk in his study in Bag End, the one room Bilbo had commandeered from his parents’ old arrangement to devote to his scribbling habit. He realized then that a different dwarf must work at each of these stations, to make up a great collective workplace, every single of them presumably employed by him.

“It’s kind that you tried not to overwhelm me,” he said aloud, “but you didn’t have to send everyone away before I came here.”

Ori laughed. “Bless you, Bilbo, but it’s empty because we’re busy! If you’d stopped by any day at this time, it would have been well cleared out.”

“Oh, that’s right. You all are still covering for me, for my obligations.”

“No, no, it’s always busy.” Ori walked through the room at a steady clip, and Bilbo was quick to follow. “Your injury hasn’t helped, but really, we’re always moving as fast as we can.”

They passed the islands of worktops until they had reached another doorway at the far end of the space, beside which was a desk that Verthandi immediately went to, shuffling through papers with such a familiarity that Bilbo supposed the desk must be hers. Through the doorway, though, was an office that surpassed all the other workspaces.

It was smaller in here, true. But it was also more militantly organized, dominated as it was by only one desk — a great table, really, set up with notes and schedules and charts. Bilbo could spot his own handwriting immediately. These must be the papers relating to his state work, as he remembered Nils describing back in the royal apartments.

He poked through the sheaves, noticing that it was all much of a piece with his work on the Dalish negotiations, the detritus of which was still piled on the floor of his ballroom. Bilbo could not quite identify the projects that each grouping represented, but he could discern that they were indeed organized in some form or another. It was curious, to think of taking so many notes on his own goings-on! Bilbo had never thought about taking notes on his life in Shire, because it had seemed so ordinary, and in fact even less interesting that many other hobbits’ lives, as he had no kinship drama. He wrote about fairy worlds with pretty description, and he used everything besides the very final product of his writing as kindling. Sometimes even things he had once been proud of ended up in the fireplace, when he grew tired or embarrassed of them.

Though there was a great deal of paper, Bilbo noticed a marked absence in actual books within the office, which was not at all like him. But he supposed that was not the sort of work that he did in this particular room. Instead of bookshelves, the walls were lined with maps, and of a curious sort. When Bilbo drew close to one — which he soon identified as a cross-section of the Mountain itself — he could see that the maps were made of nothing but a more impressive version of the writing slates that hobbit children used to practice their letters. Each map was painted in white upon a great sheet of smooth black stone, and there were other marks drawn in colored chalk that were clearly meant to be erased, to leave the original map behind. The spaces depicted were painted across the top of each slab: The Great Market, The Seven Levels, Eastern Tracts, Southern Tracts, Town of Dale, Rhovanion, Westlands.

Once Bilbo had made his full circle around the edge of the room, studying each of the maps, he found himself facing the doorway again, which led back out to the room with all of the desks. Rather than exiting, he looked above the lintel. There he spotted something else: two long pieces of parchment, framed behind glass in the dwarven style and hung side by side. He tilted his head to follow the lengthy parallel lines of both up towards the distant ceiling. He was reminded obliquely of the coupled portraits in the royal apartments, depicting his and Thorin’s parents.

One of these frames he immediately recognized as containing the contract he had signed hastily in Bag End before bolting after the dwarves: incineration and pine boxes and all that. But the one on the right — which was rather longer, in a frame that far surpassed in length its sister to the left — was not familiar.

“That’s my contract for the quest,” he told Ori, raising a finger to point a little to the left. “But what is the second?”

Ori walked over from where he had been lingering by the door, allowing Bilbo to explore for himself. The dwarf looked up to follow Bilbo’s gesture.

“Oh!” Ori sounded delighted. “Yes, that’s your marriage contract.”

Bilbo glanced quickly back at the contract, surprised as he always was — at least a little — to be reminded of his marriage to Thorin.

“‘Consort’ is quite the role,” Ori continued, “as you’ve likely figured out by now. There needed to be much negotiating on all sides — yours, Thorin’s, the state’s — concerning the responsibilities, the obligations, all of it.”

“Yes, I imagine you’d have to do a lot of expectation management,” Bilbo said carefully. “What with me being a hobbit. Couldn’t just go with the, um. The usual contract.”

“Oh, no, it’s not just for you!” Ori was quick to qualify. “It’s a necessary process for all Consorts! And every dwarven marriage, really, but the Consort position is unique in that it combines entering into matrimony with taking a job: a profession of love with a profession in trade.”

Ori tilted his head to one side with the first definition of profession, and then to the other side when he repeated the word. The poet in Bilbo was nearly charmed enough by this wordplay to quiet any misgivings he had about the weight of Ori’s actual words. Nearly.

“Still,” said Bilbo. “I can’t imagine dwarves wouldn’t prefer another dwarf to do a dwarf’s work.”

Ori opened his mouth, closed it, and then said in a rush: “I’m sorry, I just– I have to correct this: we do prefer ‘dwarrow,’ you see.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“‘Dwarrow.’” Ori repeated. “It’s the traditional plural of ‘dwarf,’ and the vast majority of us still prefer it to ‘dwarves.’ I know that’s what outsiders call us, and we have been known to use that term, ourselves, when we are in the company of allies. But under a mountain, especially this Mountain, the traditional ways will out, and so here, we are dwarrow.”

Bilbo felt his cheeks heat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know!”

“Please, don’t apologize! We don’t correct outsiders, for we’re like as not to be mocked for it; so, in terms of what you remember of our quest at present, there’s no way you could have known. I wouldn’t even ask, you understand, but I’m afraid you’ll be expected to make use of the term — as Consort, as one of us. You could never be considered an outsider.”

Bilbo was torn between a hobbitish sort of umbrage at being corrected so directly, and an intense flattery that the dwarves — dwarrow — had accepted him as one of their own. In the end, the warmth of belonging won out.

“By my soles!” he declared with a smile. “I’m glad to hear I’m not an interloper, but– but–”

But, well– Bilbo had really thought he would be! An interloper, that is. It was perhaps unfair, for he had felt the glowing comfort of the Company’s love, and had heard the dwarves’ — the dwarrow’s — booming cheers for him upon leaving the Infirmary. So it would be a hard case to make indeed, that he had no proof of their approval of him, of his inclusion in Thorin’s rule. All the same… it was hard to reckon with acceptance, after such a long time having it withheld.

“Bilbo.” Ori’s voice resonated with profound kindness. “After all you have done for us — after you saved Thorin not once, but twice! — who could deny you your place at his side?”

As was so often the case these days, Bilbo felt his hard-won stability within the conversation vanish as if it had never been. He blurted, “Sorry, what? Saved? Saved Thorin?”

“Had we not gotten there yet, in the story of the quest? I wasn’t sure where we were. I know we’d already gone over that first confrontation with Azog–”

Had they?

“–and I know we’d rather fallen off the telling of the whole tale, what with the new contract, but–”

Bilbo could feel his face going pinched and incredulous, rather without his say.

“Anyway!” Ori cut himself off. “It’s a good story, Bilbo. And popular! Let me declaim it for you; it’ll be good to hear it as the people know it.”

As he had done in the case of Durin’s tale, at Bilbo’s bedside more than a month ago, Ori shook out his shoulders and settled his hands in front of him in a neutral and official sort of pose.

“It is known,” Ori intoned, “that in the last hours of the Battle of Five Armies, King Thorin of Durin’s Folk pursued Azog the White Orc to Ravenhill, whereupon the King and his heirs were beset by a force of evil and were separated. He feared the princes lost forever, and it was in this agony that he was trapped by Azog out on the frozen River Running, where they pitched single combat.

“The White Orc swore to King Thorin all his efforts to reclaim the Lonely Mountain would come to naught, and hard by, Erebor would fall once more from the hands of dwarrow. And with that, Azog rushed the King, and they fought. King Thorin was both frenzied and wearied, with the need to safeguard what was regained and revenge what had been lost, whereas Azog was fresh and fell and full of guile. Thus when the King made a great stroke, with all his strength that remained, Azog darted aside and kicked the King’s leg, so that the hero Oakenshield stumbled and Azog’s blade was nigh at his beard.

“Then Azog laughed, and with a swift swing made to hew at King Thorin’s neck, letting forth a great yell of triumph. But the cry died in his throat. For it was then that the Hobbit, the last and most loyal of Thorin’s Company, sprang from his hiding place and threw himself into the path of the sword. It struck the Hobbit’s chest in a thrust that would have skewered a wild boar, and as such, Azog’s blade never tasted of the King’s blood.

“Azog knew not what had blocked his killing blow, and he tossed aside the Hobbit as any might toss aside trash. It was in this confusion that he was struck unaware, when the King in an obliterating rage, to have watched the best of his Company fall, again took to his feet, took up his sword, and took the White Orc’s life by severing his head at the neck, well above his mail-collar. Azog fell, and was not mourned.

“In despair, King Thorin flew to the body of the Hobbit, cast upon the snowbank of the frozen river. Azog’s blow had not struck where intended, but it landed true. To lose one so dear in defense of his own life brought the King to his knees in grief at love lost. But it was the strength of this love that had decreed the Hobbit’s life should be saved before sword-stroke ever fell. For the King, even in the haze of the dragon sickness, had gifted the Hobbit a corslet of mithril-rings: light and strong, beaten like copper and polished like glass. The Hobbit did not know its steadfastness, and had thrown himself before the sword thinking it would cost him his life. But the mithril-coat withstood the blade’s edge, and so both Hobbit and King were spared.

“They arose and went forth to the reclaimed Mountain, where they found the dwarven forces triumphant and the princes safe who had been thought lost, though Fili Steeltongue had one eye blinded beyond cure and Kili Hornbow was halt with a leg wound. Unvanquished, and returned to the most rightful dwelling place of the dwarrow in these days after Khazad-dûm, the King and the Hobbit — then burglar, now Consort — reign there together even to this very day. May long life and many victories lie before them.”

Bilbo was quite in danger of catching flies, his mouth was so agape.

“Is that–” He blinked. “Sorry, did that happen? Or did you make that up?”

Ori laughed. “All of it is true! Though, yes — I did make it up in the sense that I contributed to the crafting of the tale, and encouraged it to be said in the way it ought. Information management, you know!” He tapped the side of his nose. “But that is the tale, as true as you can get it in under five minutes.”

“So that was– that was the bruise, on my chest.” Bilbo’s hand came up to cradle at his left flank. “Fili and Kili mentioned a bruise on my chest, from up on Ravenhill.”

“Yes, exactly so!” Ori nodded vigorously. “Now that was a sound little war wound, sure enough: dark, blackened — though you were lucky that the sword didn’t drive the rings clear into the flesh. Something about the angle, I reckon. But you and Thorin were both in a state afterwards, since he had that injury to his foot and a slice to the arm… I know it’s not very dwarven of me to say so, but war really is a wicked business.”

When Bilbo said nothing for a long moment — queasy at the description of his Forgotten war wound — Ori drew in a big breath and left the matter behind. “Anyway. Yes, the term is ‘dwarrow,’ if you please. I hate to give you more to remember–”

“No, no. You all should be called what you like. I guess it’s like ‘halfling’ and ‘hobbit’ that way.” Bilbo remembered Bifur’s injunction to practice Iglishmek: to try. And so he murmured, “I live amongst dwarrow; dwarrow are my friends. I may see a dwarf, or a group of dwarrow, and say hello — then all the dwarrow will be very happy to see me.”

He glanced at Ori, embarrassed by what he had said, but Ori was only beaming. “Exactly right. Perfect grammar, and yes, they all will be. Happy to see you, I mean.”

Bilbo chuffed out a laugh.

“Shall we, then?” Ori made for the door. “I think we’ve given Thorin enough time by now, to get dressed.”

“Sorry! Will they be waiting for us?”

“Chances are we’ll still have to wait for them…”

Ori wasn’t quite right about that; they — Balin, Dwalin, and Gimli — were clearly just putting the finishing touches on Thorin’s regalia, when Bilbo, Ori, and Verthandi next found them. Bilbo was quite startled to see what the King was wearing! It was much grander than Thorin’s usual clothes, though not entirely unfamiliar: Bilbo recognized the plated mail tunic as something similar to Thorin’s armor on the quest, but now the little metal plates gleamed very bright — maybe even made of pure silver, rather than the dull steel from the road to Erebor! And his furred mantle, which the lad Gimli was even now smoothing flat over Thorin’s shoulders, spread back in a long train, heavily embroidered in colorful thread of blue, green, and white, studded about with gems and jewels and glittering little gewgaws aplenty.

The whole thing was — Bilbo dared to think — positively glitzy.

Thorin laughed to see the look on Bilbo’s face. “Aye, it’s dramatic. But the people need to be able to see me from far away, otherwise I’ll get swallowed up by the space. You’ll see once we’re out there.”

“Oh. Do I need to dress up?” Bilbo asked the group at large. He wasn’t wearing anything much different from what he usually wore. Today, Thorin had suggested a silk jacket the color of white wine, with either matching trousers or a pair in a similarly-colored diamond-patterned brocade (which of course were the ones Bilbo chose). The shade of the silk was luminous, but the whole thing was very, very understated, compared to Thorin’s frankly peacock-y garb!

He looked about the room, lined with tall cabinets, figuring that not all that lay behind their doors could just be for Thorin. “Should I– Should I put something on over this?”

Balin chuckled from where he was standing next to the door that would take them out into the Throne Room. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry about going unseen, laddie. They will be looking at you, for you, no matter what. And the regalia is all very heavy, so let’s not bother with it, not while you’re still recovering…”

Thorin swept over to Bilbo, moving easily even under the great weight of his clothing, and took up the hobbit’s hands.

“You won’t need to say anything,” he assured Bilbo. “We’ll walk out, and you won’t be called upon to speak or perform at all. Aye?”

Bilbo squeezed at Thorin’s hands. He felt nervous, which was to be expected, but he felt also — and curiously — bolstered by Ori’s story of the fall of Azog. Told to him as it had been, under the lingering cloud of his Forgetfulness, the tale seemed absurd to Bilbo. It could not help feeling a bit untrue. But if there was any version of Bilbo, any at all, who had leapt in front of an orc and shielded Thorin with his own body, then Bilbo as he was this very moment could surely go be gawked at by the good dwarves of Erebor!

Dwarrow. Dwarrow of Erebor.

So he nodded, letting go of Thorin’s hands, and with that, they faced the doorway —

— except for Ori. He turned about and presumably made to walk the five minutes back towards Bilbo’s office.

“Aren’t you coming, Ori?” Bilbo said, when no one else appeared to mark this.

Ori laughed outright. “Maker, no! I’ll leave all that to you. Pleasant toils!” he called behind him as he walked back the way they had come.

Bilbo had barely registered any of this before Dwalin was opening the door, and everyone was walking through, and so, Bilbo followed —

— but was soon halted in his tracks, by–

by–

Well!

The space Bilbo entered left him speechless, but more than that, it left him wordless. For a long, long moment, he could find no vocabulary at all, to apply to such a place.

It could not be called a room; it could not even be called a great hall. It existed, and it contained Bilbo, but for a stuttering heartbeat, he could say nothing more about it. His mind was simply washed of all thought by the immense indescribability before him.

But gradually, and thankfully, his powers of language returned.

He was — well, on a bridge of some sort, he supposed, ten or twelve feet wide. It had no railings, and it seemed to span straight over open air. With hardly any floor about him, Bilbo hesitated to look down, absolutely certain he did not want to know how far it would be to fall. The bridge led on to the Throne — for what else could that structure in front of them be? It was far enough away that Bilbo could not see the seat itself, but the whole Mountain seemed to grow from that very spot: rising up in a twisted hank of stone, standing still, veined with a subtle gleam.

If the space surrounding this mass of green marble could not be considered a room or a hall, perhaps it was simply a world in and of itself: a world built from green and gold, and made up of the sort of fanciful architecture that might have been plucked right from Bilbo’s wildest youthful dreams. He saw immense pillars fading into the distance: an extraordinary distance that seemed better measured in time rather than space, in hours and days’ worth of travel rather than acres, or even leagues. And there were yet more walkways headed to the Throne that likewise soared over empty air, and huge statues of axe-wielding dwarves — dwarrow — facing these walkways, carved right out of the hulking mass of the Mountain. All of this was visible thanks to the light thrown from colossal stained glass windows, some easily spotted and some so far away that their presence was only suggested, hinted at by the great pools of light they cast against the stonework.

Bilbo could even spot a number of long, angled staircases headed this way and that. Stairs in the Shire, of course, hardly ever took you higher than six feet above or below ground. These stairways, though, looked as if they could carry you the distance from Tuckburough to Buckland, only downward: under the earth, into the earth. These were paralleled with systems of tiny, glittering lifts on silken-looking pulley strings, just like the lift that led up to Bilbo’s garden — though he supposed the lifts were not really tiny at all. They were probably larger than the one that Bilbo had ridden in, and it was simply that they were so far away that they looked like little dust motes caught in a sunbeam.

It felt, he realized, rather like it had to first enter the royal residence: a sensation as if he were stepping out into the wideness of the outdoors, rather than stepping into his home.

Bilbo registered then that Thorin was moving forward, across the bridge, when the warmth of the King left his side. But while Bilbo’s ability to describe his surroundings may have returned, his ability to walk forward into those surroundings apparently had not.

Bilbo stayed stuck where he stood. He watched, frozen, as Thorin strode across the long walkway without him; Dwalin and Balin, Verthandi and Gimli all followed — heading right past Bilbo — heedless of the lack of railings and the threat of a long fall to be found on either side of their feet. All this would be enough to make even a deeply unfussy person panic, Bilbo thought, and he had certainly never considered himself to be of the unfussy sort.

He opened his mouth to call out to the dwarrow walking away, but even this seemed too uncertain to attempt. He was silenced by a sudden, complicated sort of feeling, one that he knew was irrational even as it kept him quiet. It was as if any noise would cause him to lose his balance and topple right off the walkway.

And yet, of course — at that very moment, Thorin turned around. Even though Bilbo had said nothing, out of fear that he would not be heard, Thorin turned back and walked over to Bilbo as if he had been called by name. His gait back to Bilbo was as casual as if he were simply heading down Bagshot Row to market; he did not look like he was striding over a bridge spanning empty air and leading to the Throne of Erebor, a symbol of his immense royal responsibility.

Even through the visual din of the Throne Room, with its confounding architecture and immense size, it was crystal clear to Bilbo that Thorin was well-suited to the surrounds, to his regalia: to his royalty. The King seemed to think there was nothing odd about any of it. But the look on his face was serious and solicitous indeed, as was the tone of his voice when he was close enough to ask: “Bilbo, are you all right?”

Bilbo nodded on instinct, but it was a small motion, as nervous as he was about losing his balance and pitching over the side of the walkway. He was not all right, it must be said — but he felt such a nod would at least prove to Thorin that Bilbo could in fact hear him, even if it couldn’t speak accurately to any current state of mind.

“Are you feeling well?” Thorin continued. His tone wasn’t pressing or impatient, which Bilbo appreciated. “Does your head hurt?”

Bilbo shook his head this time. His head did not hurt, but:

“It’s big,” he confessed, as explanation for the flat, froglike look that he was sure he was wearing. He flapped out a hand in a feeble attempt to encompass the un-encompass-able space before him.

Thorin smiled, a little pained.

“It is,” he agreed. He looked over his shoulder at the other members of today’s royal party, who had also stopped by now and were looking back towards Bilbo where he stood, quivering at the outset of the walkway. “Would you like to keep going? Or shall we return to our rooms?”

Our rooms.

Bilbo’s stomach flipped about inside him, and he felt his gaze making a quick circuit about the space — glancing at Thorin; peering down the walkway towards Balin, towards Verthandi; getting lost in the repeating pillars that faded out into the distance; flinching away from the dark drop below, down into the deep.

When neither of them spoke, Thorin held out his hand. Bilbo decided to take it.

The walkway was marginally less frightening once Bilbo had a bandage-tight grip on Thorin’s hand, their forearms aligned as if Thorin’s were a splint to keep Bilbo’s straight. As a matter of fact, Bilbo’s head cleared enough that he could see that there was actually a clearance of solid stone many feet to either side of them. With Thorin at his side, Bilbo realized how very unlikely it was that he would swerve far enough to fall over the edge, even if he were alone. And Bilbo’s nerves were certainly soothed by such a husbandly, attentive sort of action as this: holding up their clasped hands as they strolled along together!

It was fine. The whole thing was completely fine.

“The Throne Room’s promenade acts as both a display of our architectural cunning and a gesture of friendly intimidation towards our allies — those we allow under the Mountain, at least,” Thorin said into Bilbo’s ear. “But the cunning and intimidation work against us as well, I’m afraid. Few are immune. I was well into my fifties before my mother allowed me to walk this path without her hand on my arm.”

This startled a bark of laughter from Bilbo. It was not enough to completely dispel his unease, but all the same, it reminded Bilbo that Thorin would know better than most how terrifying this walkway was. It was not surprising at all, really, that he had looked back when he noticed Bilbo was not by his side — such a look had probably been as instinctual as breathing. But that didn’t make it any less sweet.

“Well, what’s a little intimidation between host and visitor?” Bilbo heard himself say, recalling Thorin’s words upon his first tour of their residence. And this made it Thorin’s turn to laugh.

“You’ve faced it well before,” the King agreed, “and you’ll face it well again.”

They joined the others and made it to the Throne, which was of course a great, raised, stony, chiseled sort of thing, just as Bilbo had expected: intimidating, stuck up on a dais in the middle of the promenade, which Bilbo saw continue on in the other direction past the Throne. Bilbo glanced away and was promptly reminded of the vast, ornate emptiness all around him. He resolved to look no farther afield than the faces of his companions, which ended up settling his nerves and his stomach both.

This was very familiar, at least: focusing on what clues he could glean from the expressions of those around him, after a lifetime spent in Shire society. And so Bilbo noted Dwalin’s look of stern attention, Balin’s mild (though canny) watchfulness, Gimli’s determination to appear as professional as possible, Verthandi’s encouraging smile, and Thorin’s–

Well, Thorin just looked distractingly handsome, as ever.

Still, understanding the looks on almost everyone else’s face left Bilbo feeling only whelmed, as it were, rather than over-. A bit calmer, more centered. Enough so that he realized that the quiet rumble — which he had taken for the buzzing of nerves in his ears — was in fact the unmistakable sound of a crowd: the chatter of many, many, many voices, all of the speakers unseen.

“Are there people here?” he asked.

“Aye!” Balin responded. “Many are petitioners waiting their turn in the galleries–” He gestured to the recessed areas Bilbo could see above the carved warriors, the ones flanking the chasm before the Throne. “But most are other citizens, come to witness the outcome of the appeals and to see the monarchs. They are below us, in the forecourt underneath the central promenade.”

Bilbo’s face twitched at the thought of looking down. But he supposed great masses of people must be collected there, staring up at them right this very moment.

“Have they gotten louder?” he asked, for he didn’t think he would have been able to ignore such a roar as this even a few minutes ago.

“Yes.” Balin’s voice was kind and deliberate. “They’ve spotted you now, and they’re happy to see you at the King’s side once more.”

And the old dwarf smiled so warmly at this prospect that Bilbo found himself smiling back, even though his stomach was turning again.

“Why don’t you give them a wave?” Balin tilted his head down and to the side, presumably towards where the great crowd was collected below, down where Bilbo wouldn’t — couldn’t — look. Balin eyes caught pointedly on Thorin and Bilbo’s still-clasped hands.

“Good idea,” Dwalin called from his position closer to the Throne. He had not spoken in a good long while, and the sound of it made Bilbo jump — which was absurd, given the volume of the people’s clamor at that point.

“Shall we?” Thorin asked Bilbo directly. He squeezed Bilbo’s hand.

Bilbo nodded, and so, feeling rather foolish, with his right hand he gave Thorin’s palm a returning squeeze, and with his left hand he tried to manage the polite sort of wave you might use to farewell relatives for whom you had a decent sort of affection.

The unseen crowd erupted. The noise of it was as indescribable as the Throne Room had been to Bilbo upon his first entrance.

It made him flinch back rather badly, and he drew his waving hand back quick, forming a fist in front of his chest. This action shaped the ruckus from the crowd back into something that Bilbo could describe: fond laughter. Not just from the sea of people below the Throne, but closer by, as well — to Bilbo’s right, when Thorin chuckled with immense warmth.

He brought his mirth in close as he brushed an unthinking kiss to Bilbo’s temple.

It was just like that joke in the garden, just like the kisses in the kitchen, just like the buss on the hand in Thorin’s workshop. It was the sort of married gesture that comingled thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness: a simultaneously immense and absent-minded love.

“Do they know now?” Bilbo blurted. He turned to face Thorin. “About the Forgetting?”

But it was Balin who responded from behind the both of them; he sounded satisfied. “Aye, they do.”

“So you settled on a story to tell them!” Bilbo was too afraid to look down to see where the crowd was gathered, but the news of what they knew changed the shape of their cheering in his ears. His heartbeat was now audible and swelled with the clamor of all the dwarves — dwarrow! dwarrow! — collected below, but he held onto the undeniable warmth of the sound

“Actually!” Balin swiveled a bit at the waist, the better to face Bilbo; it was a very loose and comfortable sort of movement, one that Bilbo could not see ever feeling safe enough, himself, to make on the walkway to the Throne.

“We thought that what you said to Ori, at the start of all this, was very apposite,” Balin continued heartily. “Do you remember? You said there was no metaphor for the Forgetting, no comparison to be made — and we all agreed! So we settled on circulating the truth, plain and simple: you had Forgotten the quest, the reclamation, your relationship with Thorin… all of it. And so you and Thorin have been taking this time to yourselves, to relearn each other, to fall in love all over again. You see? The truth.”

Bilbo blinked. If he thought he could spare the motion, he might have tilted in place, but as it was, he simply remained absolutely still.

There was the immediate flash of anxiety: don’t say that, he wanted to blurt. Falling in love! It was unbearably embarrassing to think of all Erebor knowing of his feelings for Thorin, to think of anyone divulging Bilbo’s feelings to Thorin himself. Thorin, who was right there beside him, carefully aligned at the arm. Thorin, who was hearing all that they said this very moment; who knew of Bilbo’s affection and attraction, who of course already knew.

Bilbo let out a long breath with concerted evenness. “And… how are they taking it?”

“We have heard positive chatter,” Balin said. “People like the thought of it! It’s romantic, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…” He had a curious, detached manner of speaking on the matter — which was deathly serious, to Bilbo — as if it were all neither here nor there.

It was an immense amount of pressure, was what it was. To have to fall in love again, to be watched as you did so… Is that what the Ereboreans really believed was happening: that he and Thorin were falling in love again, like some fairy tale?

…Could Bilbo really say that was not what was happening?

“There’ll be even fewer rumors after today,” Balin said, again in that satisfied, analytic tone. “Less panic, now that the two of you have been seen safe and sound by so many.”

‘Less panic,’ Bilbo heard. Not ‘no panic.’

“They know hobbits are private, so we thought the delay would seem understandable, if it were down to matters of the heart,” Balin continued. “And the waiting will have lessened the anger that might have erupted at the menfolk, anyway. The accident is months old by now; there’s naught to be done about it. It buys you the time back, too, since you were last seen in public. No one would expect you to get right back to your responsibilities, not when the two of you needed a second–” And here Balin said a Khuzdul word that Bilbo obliquely recognized: marriage-sabbatical, a honeymoon, a period of rest after a wedding. The old dwarf propped his clasped hands upon his belly, well-pleased with himself. “Yes, I think it’s a good tale, for all it’s no tale at all.”

Thorin squeezed at their own joined palms. “Does that sound all right, Bilbo?”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows. What could he say, but ‘yes’? Bilbo supposed he wished everyone had asked him before they publicized the matter… but, well, what could he reasonably say against the truth? The only honest answer was ‘yes.’

So: “Absolutely! Awfully kind of you, to do so much on my behalf. I’m very grateful. And, well, if that’s sorted,” Bilbo heard himself start saying to Thorin, his tongue gone large and indistinct in his mouth. He made himself loosen his grip on Thorin’s hand to only a normal sort of tightness, and he forced himself look only at Thorin’s face, too, so he wouldn’t look down. “Exit back from whence we came?”

“Now you move on to the petitions!” Gimli corrected, his eager voice breaking in through the burr of the crowd.

Oh. Bilbo had forgotten the petitions.

Gimli darted in close enough that Bilbo flinched into Thorin’s side; the lad’s arms were outstretched, beckoning the two of them showily towards the Throne, presumably for the benefit of the watching crowds. “Now, please, if your Majesties will come this way. Master Bilbo, sir, you’ll stand to the left of the Throne–”

“Uh–” Bilbo gasped. He didn’t move an inch. “Now, wait just a minute– I don’t. I don’t know if I can.”

Balin came in close, too, the sudden movement of which could not be said to help. “Well, the image of the royal family standing beside the Throne is traditional, but it’s not, strictly speaking, necessary. We can just bring in an additional seat you could sit and use–”

Somehow the thought of taking to a chair on the dais, putting his back squarely to one half of the abyss supported only by a piece of furniture, was worse than the idea of standing up. Surely Bilbo would lose his balance and the chair would just topple straight backwards.

Up there on the promenade, not four feet from its edge, Bilbo suddenly felt — first only a little, and then uncontrollably — as if he were caught under a sudden Shire rainstorm, in a ravine, trying to get home and needing to cross a stream at the bottom to do it. In good weather, a stream like that would present but a piddling little obstacle; under a torrent of rainwater, though, all it would take was a touch of bad luck for the waters to surge and rise around you, for a flood to rush through whilst you were already too deep in the ditch to turn back.

It was a horrid thought, and the imagined unsteadiness of Bilbo’s feet in heavy, rushing water — mingled with the very real, very vertiginous height of the great Throne Room — made him abruptly sure he was about to topple right over the edge– and drown– or crash down flat– whichever, whichever–

“Honestly, I think I should just–” Bilbo heard himself begin talking, though the words sounded mushy to his ears. “I’m just going to try and get close to the ground, actually.” And he reached a hand down to start the process of sitting upon the floor.

“No,” Thorin said immediately. “No, Bilbo, stay standing–”

But Bilbo really did think it would be best if he at least had his bottom sat securely upon the ground. Having his hands planted flat to steady him, too, that certainly sounded nice– and then if he could manage that, he might as well just lie down entirely, come to think of it, so there would be no way to tip over at all–

“Bilbo,” Thorin said again, clearly trying not to sound strained. His arm had come around Bilbo’s back in a tight band, supporting the hobbit so that he was still upright even though his knees were loose and bent. “Bilbo, please, the more — unpredictably you move, the harder it is to–”

“I think we should head to the retiring room!” Verthandi said, coming in close alongside everyone else. Her voice — even through the odd hum in Bilbo’s ears — sounded deliberately bright and regimentally cheerful.

“Good idea,” rumbled Thorin. He began to turn Bilbo about, so that there was a jerk between them when Thorin started walking and Bilbo stayed still. The loss of the sight of Thorin’s face was like a life-saving rope had been yanked away before Bilbo could grasp it, leaving him quite at the mercy of the flood. Bilbo bobbed to the side to try and keep up with Thorin, and it turned his stomach, to be so unsteady on his feet.

Balin’s murmur from beside them was almost inaudible: “Thorin, let Verthandi handle this.”

“Be serious,” said Thorin. “He’s about to fall over!”

“Yes, I can see that, and so can all your citizens.” Balin’s light tone of voice was just as deliberate and regimented as Verthandi’s had been, if much less chipper. “This whole thing is meant to be a show of stability; you can’t both fall to pieces. Now, give him a hug and a kiss, and then you can listen to the petitions alone.”

The King growled. “Balin–!”

“Please. I know this is hard, but if you leave it much longer, any malcontent will only get more difficult to quash.” When Thorin still did not loosen his supportive hold across Bilbo’s back, Balin pressed: “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t see a true need, laddie.”

Thorin gusted out an angry breath through his nose, but turned to Bilbo and gave him the requisite hug and kiss — which felt rather more businesslike when arising from Balin’s advice, rather than at Thorin’s own whim. Bilbo’s stomach hardly swooped at all. Then, with a resolute swiftness, Thorin transferred his grip on the hobbit’s hands over to Verthandi. His apprentice’s grasp was warm and sure, but still, Bilbo could not help feeling worse off: to feel Thorin’s touch disappear, to watch Thorin stepping back away.

“Bilbo?” Verthandi asked. “Shall we give them another wave?”

Bilbo refocused.

He could indeed hear that the sound of the crowd had gone quiet, their murmurs ambivalent. Gamely, he raised his hand for another wave — one that he hoped looked less uncertain, this time — and yes: another cheer went up.

“Wonderful! This way,” Verthandi prompted again. “We’ll head to the retiring room.”

“Sorry,” Bilbo said instinctively, once they two had started walking in the opposite direction from where their little royal contingent had come in. He chanced a stiff-necked look back at the Throne, and saw that Thorin was, in fact, watching them leave from a careful distance away — but Balin was clearly drawing him by the arm over to the great royal seat.

“Nothing to be sorry about!” Verthandi said very warmly, and so she pulled Bilbo along.

When they finally reached it, the retiring room — the retiring room to match the attiring room on the other side of the promenade, Bilbo supposed — felt like an absolute miracle. Once the door was closed behind them, the din of the crowd and the vast, grand dimness of the Throne Room were gone: immediately and utterly banished.

In place of all that noise and darkness, Bilbo found a small, brightly-lit space hosting a healthy fire and walls covered over in a swirling mosaic of sand-colored tiles. This was all well and good, but Bilbo paid almost no attention to the look of the place. He instead zeroed in on a table bearing refreshments so perfectly appealing to Bilbo that he could not help but liken them to a magical feast, laid out by invisible hands, just for him!

The table bore a tray of shortbread biscuits, a platter of tiny sausage rolls, and a bowl of dried currants; there was tea, of course, and a pitcher of water as well. Bilbo fell upon the spread with a quickness, and ate four of the shortbread squares and two sausage rolls in rapid succession. He had only just scooped up a fistful of currants to peck at when Verthandi made to give him a cup of tea, and to free up his hands to accept it, he needed to eat all of the berries out of his palm at once, rather like a pony might munch up an apple from an open hand.

“Thank you,” he said at last. He only just barely managed to speak without his mouth full.

Verthandi tossed out a permissive hand in his direction — don’t worry about it — and turned to settle into one of the two plush armchairs Bilbo hadn’t noticed, set up beside the tea table.

Bilbo gathered up three more sausage rolls and six squares of shortbread onto one of the little sampling plates stacked beside the teapot, before he took his own seat. He felt much more settled for having something in his belly, and so he was able to chew his food a bit more… thoughtfully, now. Less brutishly, at least.

He cleared his throat.

“How ingenious, to have this assortment ready just outside the Throne Room!” he remarked, hoping to signal his appreciation to Verthandi. He would never apologize for being hungry, but it was still rude to eat standing up, indoors, without so much as a plate in hand, by the moon and stars!

“You have your own genius to thank for that,” Verthandi replied. “You inaugurated this tradition! Said it was too far a walk back to your apartments and too long a wait for the next meal, after working through an audience.”

“Oh. Then I hope this wasn’t all set out for me. I hardly did enough work to need it.”

“No, no, his Majesty the King likes to have a nosh ready after he’s finished, now, too. Though he wouldn’t own up to it.”

“I expect not.” Bilbo smiled. “Still, I really shouldn’t be so ravenous. I couldn’t have been out there even a quarter-hour. Nothing warranting a treat.”

He put a half-eaten sausage roll down glumly.

“It was just that it sounded like a blasted lot of people,” he said. “And looked like a long way down!”

He laughed at this last bit, but the sound of it rang false in the air.

The truth was: now that he was out of the Throne Room, Bilbo was starting to feel very silly. The space had been intimidating indeed, but no amount of reassurance from Thorin that everyone fell under its spell could make it a less miserable omen that the very Consort of Erebor should be so shaken by his own place by the Throne.

And the splendor and height of the hall was such that he hadn’t even been able to see his citizens — they were too far down! Anyone might have been nervous to stand amongst a huge crowd of people they were about to disappoint, but Bilbo couldn’t even make himself look at them!

He reached up to rub his fingers into his temples.

Verthandi happened, just then, to stretch her booted feet out into Bilbo’s field of vision. When he glanced up, he saw that she had leaned back in her armchair and was peering up at the ceiling. He could not say he knew her well enough to tell if she was truly relaxed, or if it was all a bit of a ruse.

In any case, Verthandi said: “You know, my first time approaching the Throne, you let me hold onto your arm the whole way down the promenade.”

“Good of me,” Bilbo muttered. He sipped his tea.

“Yes, it was! And after that, for most of the duration, I did pretty well. But then I did drop my pen, maybe two-thirds through. I was so terrified I would tip off the dais if I bent down to get it, that you had to be the one to fetch it for me.”

Well, that did un-pickle him a bit. He chuckled.

“And for whatever reason,” Verthandi continued, “that was the thing that completely threw me off! A dropped pen I didn’t even have to pick up, myself! I got so nervous, I couldn’t move — not even when all the petitioners were through and the King was processing out. You talked me down and got me moving, even though everyone else had left the promenade.”

“I understand,” said Bilbo. “You’re trying to tell me it happens to everyone.”

“Well, yes. But also — when you were standing up there, telling me it was fine, that I was safe, that we could leave whenever I was ready… you made it look like we were discussing some– some papers, some notes, I don’t really remember what it was. But you pretended like you needed me to help you finish something up before you left the promenade, like you had just a few more items to sort before you followed the King.”

“That sort of playacting is only polite, my dear.”

“For hobbits, maybe!” Verthandi sat up a little in her chair, and directed her gaze squarely back at him. “But any other dwarf that day would have just chivvied me down the walk, and made it clear as crystal that I had gotten in my head about the height and the crowds and the whole thing. Best to get me quick out of a bad situation, and all.

“And I would have looked silly, which would have been fine — except that I had invited my whole family to watch my first audience with the King, my first public appearance with both monarchs! Because I was so proud, to have clinched such a prestigious apprenticeship! And so it would have been beyond embarrassing, if I had stalled out next to the Throne, in front of the King and the Consort and the Court and just about every dwarf ever made.

“And my mother and brother would surely have teased me about it afterwards, and they wouldn’t have meant any harm. But it would have hurt me, because of course it would’ve, how could it not! And so then I’d have had to tell them off for it, and my da would have taken my side, and my grandparents wouldn’t have, and then at that point, the whole family would have quarreled. It might not have spoiled the day, but I’d always remember and regret it. You know how it is.”

Bilbo nodded, knowing better than many how the mind would fixate.

“But instead–” and here Verthandi’s voice gained a touch of reverence. “Instead, I get to remember how you made my fear look like diligence. Because all anyone could talk about, that evening, was how hard-working I was, to attend you up there by the Throne. How tireless, to assist you for so long and with such care, after the proceedings were through; how essential I had made myself to you, that you already relied so deeply upon my help! They still think you’re a bit helpless, even now, I’m sorry to say.”

Bilbo barked out a laugh.

Verthandi continued, “But the whole time, you had really been helping me. You had been making me look so diligent and skilled in front of my family, in front of the whole Mountain, and you made it so that I can look back with pride on that day.”

Here, she made a firm sort of nod to herself, and her eyes were far away.

“It was a kindness I couldn’t have imagined, before you offered it to me. It meant more to me — means more to me — than I can say. I still think of it, obviously.”

Bilbo felt his mouth screw up, torn as it was between the impulse towards an affectionate smile and a melancholy little frown. “I’m glad I was of service.”

Verthandi blinked, seeming to come back to herself.

“Look,” she said. “What it comes down to, in the end, is that we should all welcome an unexpected kindness, no matter what we have or haven’t done to deserve it. These treats are a kindness, and of course you do deserve it. And you should feel proud about today.”

Bilbo sighed.

He understood what she meant, of course. He had done a difficult thing this morning: reacquainting himself with his office, trying to attend the petitions, venturing out before the Throne. It showed a great deal of strength and indicated much progress. But it was hard, nevertheless, this playing-at-both-sides: blithely accepting what-all his past self had done, and trying to assess what differences remained between that hobbit and the Bilbo that walked around Erebor today.

In some respects, they were near identical. In others, they were nigh irreconcilable. And the constant widening and closing of the gap between them was unavoidable. Ever-wearing.

“What I should do is take a nap,” was what Bilbo told Verthandi, instead of all that. “I’m sorry to say I’m exhausted.”

Verthandi laughed.

“Well, aye!” She huffed and heaved herself out of the chair. “Bilbo, I am sure I can use your vast and invaluable diplomatic tutelage to arrange, for you, a nap.”

Bilbo laughed too, but then he shook his head. “Ah, but I should wait for Thorin.”

She clicked her tongue: a very hobbitish sound, in truth. “If there’s anything I know about his Majesty, it’s that he would want you to get rest more than he’d want you to wait for him. Up you get, and off to bed!”

--

So, one might call Bilbo’s work as Consort slow-going. But this was blessedly untrue for his work in his Ereborean garden! There, he followed his instincts, and this effort was near immediately rewarded.

It gave him so much pleasure to bury his hands in the earth: to water, to prune, to harvest. He plucked flowers. He gathered honey. He spent meditative afternoons trimming the clover where it had overgrown into the flower beds.

He could understand why the Bilbo-that-was — Erebor’s true Consort — would appreciate the contrast of gardenwork with the demands of royal appearances. For Bilbo’s time now was split either between royal responsibility on the one hand, surrounded by official sorts of people, or otherwise alone, tidying the residence or tending to his Mountainside garden. Gone were the days of hosting his small groups of dwarves — dwarrow — or spending a leisurely afternoon reading alongside Thorin. It made for a substantial shift from those first few weeks of Bilbo’s recovery under the Mountain, and it was curious to think that he was nostalgic for the chore of hosting the Company. But he was. A bit.

Ah, well. He supposed it was to be expected, having traded one set of obligations for another, but not all obligations were a burden!

Like the gardening itself: what he could not understand, anymore, was why precisely he had surrendered all of this to the Gamgees, back in the Shire. Gardening was their expertise and their joy, of course, and Bilbo had trusted them with the task whilst overcome with grief. But to have given up all charge of Bag End’s prized gardens…? It was not hobbitish. He would never suppose himself particularly gifted at gardening, but he was learning that he wasn’t bad at it, either! And so the narrowing of his life, this abdication of responsibility, seemed odd to him now.

Anyway, if the garden had survived the dwarrow’s hesitant, halting love in his sickbed absence, it would surely survive Bilbo’s, too, and so he was enjoying the sensation of tending to his mountain garden, deeply. All the same, the satisfaction Bilbo found in the work was not solely or uncomplicatedly pleasant. It also created a painful feeling, one that reminded Bilbo of a limb coming back awake after falling asleep. It was a sort of buzzing discomfort that vibrated through him as he gardened, and as he recovered, and as he tried to resurface. Really, it was the pain of feeling again, feeling anything at all, after such a long time of feeling very little — after a long time of forcing himself to feel very little.

That feeling of sensation returning after a long numbness: it gave Bilbo pause.

He could not help but compare it to what might happen when — if? when — he regained his memories. At first, the thought had left him frightened — completely swamped with dread and terror — that it would be like dying. That this current version of himself would come to end, would disappear. But the more he thought on the matter, the more ridiculous and maudlin this fear wound up seeming. He wouldn’t disappear at all! No, no, it would not be as if he were erased, scraped away from the page of memory; it wouldn’t feel as it had, to find the Bilbo-that-was completely vanished from Bilbo’s mind.

No. The Bilbo-that-was would come back, and it would be just like a traveler returning home after a long journey, stepping back into his empty smial just as Bilbo had imagined he would do once he was done with his foolhardy adventure: this will all be over, and you’ll just go home.  

But the smial wouldn’t be empty. Bilbo, as he was right now, would be standing there in the foyer to greet himself, ready or not, and then they would have to live together. Bilbo-as-he-was-now would remain, but the Bilbo-that-he-would-become — the Bilbo with his memories returned and his lofty, worldly vantage point as Consort reinstated — would look at himself and he would– and he would–

Well, that was nearly worse. For what would that future-Bilbo see that he could respect?

Bilbo had lived in Erebor now for months; he’d had so many novel experiences that he felt soundly changed from the Bilbo that had lived on in Bag End after his parents died. It was therefore hard not to look back on that provincial, smial-bound version of himself through the eyes of the dwarrow, eyes shaped by living with them in Erebor: eyes that had seen Bilbo, back then, as entitled and foolish.

And so, in many ways, he looked back on that Bilbo who had just set out on the quest as both near twin and near unknown — so close to the version that had come to be loved by the Mountain and the Company and Thorin, and Thorin, and Thorin… but still someone so half-baked. Not yet who he would become. Not yet the version who would surely, inevitably look back at Bilbo as he was right at that moment, and would judge what he saw.

So, Bilbo-as-he-was-now no longer feared, precisely, losing himself when the memories returned. But he did feel a preemptive sadness. It made him sad, even now, to look back on those past versions of himself — the Bilbo glowing with youth, growing up with his parents; the Bilbo grieving their loss, holed up in Bag End; the Bilbo uncomfortable on the quest, unaccustomed to hardship — and to recognize them, but to feel separate from them, too. They were as distinct from who he was now, as his parents’ portraits were distinct from the hobbits who had told him stories to help him fall asleep, who had painted stars upon his ceiling to comfort him at night. He could recognize them, but they were not the same. He wanted to avoid looking at them, for fear of what their memory would summon.

He was, in short, already experiencing himself as obsolete. He already lived with the double vision of seeing the Bilbo-that-was-Consort around every corner. But there was also the double vision born of remembering the Bilbo-that-was-in-the-Shire, whom he felt himself — even now — seeing from the present moment and shaking his head over, turning aside from. It was sad, indeed, to think of the Bilbo-he-was-right-now becoming a Bilbo-that-was, remembered only in retrospect, and maybe not fondly.

--

“Sing hey!” Bilbo sang. “For the bath at close of day, that washes the weary mud away! A loon is he that will not sing: O! Water Hot is a noble thing!”

That old song about water that he had recalled upon reawakening in Erebor was back in Bilbo’s head — fittingly, for he was now having a long and hot bath in his guestroom in Dale, after a long and hot day of work!

It had been a good day, too. He and Thorin, alongside Balin and Verthandi, had gone down the Mountain to visit the capital of the menfolk in the North, to continue the necessary work of publicizing the stable relationship between the two kingdoms (and between Bilbo and Thorin themselves). They had gone down in state to stay overnight with King Bard and to visit the home of the guildsman Yorick, his wife, and his daughter Hanne.

Thorin had even brought Bilbo to an appointment with Yinka in her clinic, though he had not joined Bilbo inside —

(— where Bilbo had confessed to her straight away that he still had not remembered anything. Nothing concrete, at least; nothing deeper than the embodied memory of watering his plants. Best not put off his confession of this meager showing, Bilbo reckoned. Indeed, the sheltering dimness of Yinka’s office made it easier to be honest: swathed as it was in dark wood shiplap, the only plane of white being the beautifully starched linen upon the examination table.

Bilbo had hoped that the telling of his shame, quickly, would banish the intense feeling of truancy that had been stiffening his shoulders for days in advance of his visit to Dale. That skiving sort of feeling was familiar; Bilbo had never been pleased to let someone else dictate his studies, and before his parents had died, he’d had nightmares well into adulthood about hiding missing schoolwork from the Hobbiton schoolmaster.

…Of course, after his parents died, Bilbo’s nightmares had centered instead on the hacking cough that had taken his father and the wasting sickness that had taken his mother. And now, these days, he simply couldn’t remember his dreams at all, which he supposed was apt, given the Forgetting.

In any case, telling Yinka that he recalled not one single memory of the quest for, and reclamation of, Erebor did not offer Bilbo any relief. Instead, it felt like carving an epitaph into a gravestone: three months and nothing to show for it.

Obviously, Yinka noticed.

“I wish you would not worry so,” she’d said, after she had used her hands — as well as cards with letters painted on them in various sizes, and little blunted hammers for use on his knees and elbows, and that lantern of concentrated light — to thoroughly examine his person. She had tested his eyesight, both central and peripheral; the reflexes in his arms, fingers, knees, and jaw; his muscle-mass, strength, and coordination; his short-term recall; and what-all remained of the scarring on his scalp. Nothing was amiss, except for everything that was missing.

“You are making incredible recovery in a very short amount of time!” Yinka had continued, so bracingly it sounded almost like pleading. “I am overjoyed for you, and I am sure your Company is all very proud of your progress, too. Besides, worrying never helped heal a single injury that I have seen. Usually it slows the process, you know, Bilbo.”)

But afterwards, and the whole day through, walking through Dale with his husband by his side had itself been a considerable joy. It was wonderful to be out in the open air, under the hazy sunlight of late summer, and though their party steered well clear of any construction, it was pleasing to finally see the rebuilding of Dale, which had been much alluded to over the course of Bilbo’s recovery.

The city was situated in a dip between two ridges that emanated down the Mountainside, and as such, it was easy to spot the original footprint of the place, as it must have lain before it was devastated by the dragon. Bilbo could spot the flat clearances of earth that had formed the foundations of buildings and homes, and he could well imagine the way that rubble had been removed from the area, which was now verdant with grasses reclaiming the empty space. The wide expanse of the entire city had Bilbo quite surprised, for he had been expecting another version of Bree: populated by above-ground buildings all made of weather-worn wood, shambled up against each other too close to be entirely comfortable.

Dale, however, was quite a different story. What buildings were present were either made of a friendly-looking, sandy sort of stone, or crafted with stark nobility from familiar Ereborean marble. They were more often than not girded with scaffolding along their sides — the sight of which always sent Thorin’s hand squeezing around Bilbo’s arm — and buttressed by tents sheltering building supplies: lengths of timber, rope, bulging sacks of something or other that Bilbo may once have been able to identify, or which perhaps had always been so arcane and specific to the act of construction that he’d never known. The men of Dale were clearly taking advantage of the summer weather to make a great deal of progress.

And the menfolk themselves were everywhere! It seemed they all stopped in the middle of their days to come out and see him. Scores and scores of men and women, children darting amongst legs and skirts, babies tilted to look out towards Bilbo from their parents’ arms; crowds of people lining the streets, leaning out of windows, following their progress through the city. It was a bit eerie, for there was no clapping or cheering; Bilbo’s story had spread down in Dale the same as it had spread under the Mountain, and so it seemed all the men were still paying mind to his head injury. But every soul did smile, and wave, and whisper all through the day. Bilbo could feel his hair stand on end, from awareness of the many eyes and hushed voices following him through the streets.

But at last, the work of showing himself off to the relieved crowds of Dale was done. The walking and waving had left Bilbo exhausted, sweaty, and dusty, his foothair fairly caked with dirt from the still half-paved roads. When he asked for a respite, their party had agreed and moved along to one massive sandstone building looming over all that was currently being rebuilt. Multiple stories tall, it bore a curved and shingled roof. Inside, it was cool, with light entering a wide hall through tall and narrow windows in the stone. This was the Great Citadel of Dale, which was both Bard’s residence as King and seat of the Dalish government, and when they entered, Bilbo was sent up to his guestroom to rest.

And Bilbo did mean sent up: his room was in the ‘attic,’ that tippy-top part of mannish houses, under the roof, that Bilbo had always stared up and wondered at, unable to imagine for what they could possibly use such a strange — and surely cramped! — space. However, in the Great Citadel, the attic was both airy and inviting, hidden as it was under the building’s large, curved roof and banked about with little dormer windows. These windows were covered over in linen screens so loosely woven as to be translucent, keeping out the summer dust and insects, with wooden shutters of such intricate geometric carvings as to dim the room of some, but not all, light. The plaster walls were cheerfully yellowed, and the wooden floors were warm and easy on the feet. Combined with the hobbit-sized furniture — bed, sofas, desk, and all — it was among the loveliest guestrooms Bilbo had inhabited. It surely put the hospitality of Bag End, Brandy Hall, and the Great Smials all to shame… and it was clear he had stayed here before.

Bilbo made use of the basin beneath one of the windows to rinse off his dusty feet before falling into the bed in the sort of deep, twilit sleep that is very easy to come by on a summer afternoon, and when he woke up, it was to find a warm bath set up in a tub before the unlit fireplace, which was filled only with white beeswax candles rather than the makings of a fire. Bilbo had found the bathwater scented with heather blossoms, and a still-steaming ewer of hotter water set up alongside, should he want to adjust the tub’s temperature.

The entire scene was so dreamlike — the tub brought in while he slept, as if by faeries; the heady fragrance of the bathwater; the evening sun blunted by the latticed Dalish shutters — that Bilbo found himself quite comfortable to sing his bath song aloud, when before he had been so nervous to, back at his first awakening in the Infirmary.

Soon enough, however, he surfaced enough to recall that it was surely time for dinner, and so Bilbo dressed and took himself downstairs.

If Bilbo’s room was pleasing to him, he was also well-satisfied with his hosts: Bard and his three children. Reacquainting with Sigrid and Bain had been as easy and dreamlike as slipping into the bathwater upstairs. They were both warmhearted and good-natured towards him, even knowing that he could not remember them one bit. Like Bilbo, Bard’s family had refreshed themselves from when they had attended him throughout the day, following him through the streets of Dale: gone were their elaborate, royal trappings, replaced by simple twill dresses — in red for Tilda and blue for Sigrid — and a shirt of homespun for Bain.

The Citadel’s hall was set for a feast, but Bilbo was relieved to see that the spread was informal. The dwarrow, the menfolk, and Bilbo all sat about the long, central table without order of precedent, and the food was plentiful, simple, and delicious: only a few recipes served in large bowls and plates, passed around the table in a hobbit-like style. The central dish was a curious pie of flaky pastry layered with a sticky mixture of minced pork, sauteed greens, and coarsely chopped nuts, aromatic and heavily spiced. There was also a simple salad with a vinegar dressing, and a green spread made of herbs, and oil, and a bit of hard cheese ground together and spooned onto bread (and Bard’s children took great delight in pointing out to Verthandi how its beautiful color almost exactly matched her hair). Bilbo’s favorite thing on the table wound up being the tiny potato dumplings — pillowy in texture and shape — that were served in a summery sauce of burst cherry tomatoes and caramelized onions. And for dessert, there was passed around soft cheese whipped to cool fluffiness and smothered in warm stewed cherries.

Bilbo thought the whole meal was a triumph, but he found himself often glancing to his right to see how Thorin was faring. Bilbo watched his husband as he mechanically consumed two slices of the meat pie, cutting off bites with the side of his fork at a metronomic pace. The King also took a serving-spoon’s-worth of the little sauced dumplings, though Bilbo noted that he hid the burst tomato skins in a pile underneath the knife where he had laid it across his plate. Thorin took none of the salad, nor the herb spread, though he ate a slice of plain bread and a large scoop of the dessert, relishing the cherries especially. The King said hardly anything during the meal, but Bilbo did not feel much burdened by having to carry the conversation, since there was still so much to re-learn about Bard and his children.

After dinner, Sigrid and Tilda cleared the dishes, and then Bard, Bain, and Thorin moved the table and chairs off to the side of the Citadel’s central hall. Bilbo hardly had time to offer to help before all was said and done! He stood there only for a moment, holding his own plate and tankard in an attempt to clear them, but these were swiftly taken from him by Bain, and Bilbo was sent to go sit down upon the cushioned chairs near the veranda.

As with the clearing of the dishes and the furniture, however, it was no time at all until everyone had joined him upon the sofas and seats. This was the point at which Balin brought forth a folded bundle of green cloth wrapped about with a tooled leather belt, which Thorin accepted into his arms and then began to unbuckle and unwrap. Bilbo could not imagine what the package might be — a gift? some sort of after-dinner game? — but Bard and his children did not seem especially intrigued by its contents, saying nothing at all and instead making themselves comfortable: the daughters curling their legs up on the seats and Bain tilting his head back upon the cushions. Bilbo, however, watched with rapt interest, and was shocked to see revealed from Thorin’s bundle:

A harp!

A mid-sized harp, which Thorin cradled in his lap between the juncture of his legs. Its burled wood and brass frame gleamed gold like summer-collected honey, and Bilbo could see that its strings were delicately colored after some pattern he could not follow: white, blue, red.

Well, now! Thorin was a harpist!

The Shire had its own harps, but they didn’t often see use, being widely considered a contemplative sort of instrument and hobbits widely recognizing themselves as un-contemplative sorts of creatures. During a dance or night at the pub, the harp could hardly hold its own amidst the boisterousness of the fife and fiddle, so you were most likely to encounter the harp’s music in someone’s smial at the close of a dinner party, if the host forced you to sit through their playing while you sipped your digestif.

Most hobbits would much prefer to gossip into the late hours, and Bilbo had, too, in his tweens, when he had rambled about Hobbiton with a large crowd of friends. But upon entering adulthood, he had started to prefer ending an evening with music. Nowadays — or, he supposed he should say: in the days before the quest — listening to gossip just reminded Bilbo of how little he noticed about his neighbors' lives, how difficult it was to grasp the nuances of their goings-on. A musical coda to a dinner party, on the other hand, meant Bilbo might lose himself to his listening and only resurface to applaud during the breaks between movements! And so, he appreciated that Thorin’s playing, now, meant there was no more need for talk. While it had been lovely to reacquaint himself with the goings-on of Bard and Bain and Sigrid and Tilda during dinner, Bilbo was in need of a break — which was a luxury that Thorin’s harp could provide. When the King plucked the strings, the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that speaking seemed impossible and Bilbo forgot everything else, swept away into dark lands under familiar moons, far over the mountains and very close to his hobbit-hole under the Hill.

This rapture meant that Bilbo startled quite badly when he felt a hand upon his shoulder. But it was only Bard, who had stood up and was now gesturing with a dipped chin and a jerked elbow out toward the veranda.

For a moment, Bilbo could not believe that Bard honestly meant to interrupt Thorin’s playing, and — what’s more! — seemed to expect that Bilbo would actually leave the building while his husband was playing an infamously difficult instrument with an undeniable degree of expertise for the first time that Bilbo could remember! Why, even now, the piece that Thorin was playing melted from a melody picked out with exacting precision into a series of cascading notes that would surely trip over themselves if Thorin did not have them in corralled so neatly under his nimble fingers–

Bard had the gall to clear his throat!

Bilbo’s mouth dropped open with a scoffing sound that he tried to keep as quiet as possible, but with a glance back at Thorin — whose eyes were lowered with deliberate attention upon his musical work — Bilbo did stand up and follow Bard outside.

…In fairness, they could still hear Thorin’s playing from the spot where Bard brought them to a halt, out alongside the carved-wood railing. In fact, the way that the tune had gone distant and dim only made it sound more magical. This, combined with the veranda’s glorious vista over the revitalized Dale, its buildings gilded in flattering rays of golden sunlight, with long, blue shadows cuddled like affectionate cats against their walls and windows… its pennants fluttering in the dry evening breeze, which carried with it the comforting smell of summer grasses going to seed… All of it made Bilbo take in a deep, restorative breath, exhaling his irritation and sending it off with the wind.

Now, he thought to himself. This is not so bad.

“Bilbo,” said Bard with great warmth, from where he stood to Bilbo’s right. “How are you?”

The calm and the beauty of the scene made it easy to bypass the usual type of chattery and hobbitish answers he might give in response to such a question. He said instead, after a moment of true consideration: “Do you know: I feel very well. I had not known if this visit would do me good, but I feel quite refreshed. You are an excellent host, your Majesty.”

Bard hummed, pleased and amused. “And what of Thorin — do you find him an excellent host? How has it been, up in the Mountain?”

“Well, I don’t know that you can call a husband a host! But I find my home to my liking, if that’s what you mean.”

“And you don’t feel overextended? Overworked?”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows. “Do I seem overworked?”

“You did sleep away the entire afternoon.”

“Don’t blame my laziness on the dwarrow!” he joked, to avoid sharing that, in truth, he did feel a little overextended. A little.

Bard drummed his hands upon the top of the railing; Bilbo was having to look out at the view through the gaps between its bannisters. The King said next, “You know, Thorin had a talk with me today, while you were resting. He told me that you had thought the representatives in the trade talks with Umbar to be lopsided, and had come to him to add more of us menfolk to the table before you got back to work as our mediator. He said that if we had noted this, too, we ought to nominate more of our people to the talks — that Erebor wouldn’t mind a thing like that, not if it were done for equality’s sake.”

“Did he now?” Bilbo said, trying not to sound surprised. It wouldn’t do for Bard to think that King and Consort were not a united front. But still: Bilbo was indeed surprised. Thorin had said he would take Bilbo’s advice. But to act on it so decisively, to afford it such immediate credence…? It was good of Thorin, if not a bit sudden. Bilbo had not thought he would need to work again on the negotiations — not so soon, at least. It still seemed like the purview of the Bilbo-that-was.

“And… would you say that had been the case?” Bilbo continued. Trying to phrase the question felt the same as it might to leap on top of this very balustrade, to try to balance his way through walking its length. “Had you all felt the parties to be, um. Somewhat uneven?”

King Bard breathed out through his nose, evidently feeling the delicacy of the moment as well.

“The numbers did seem like an insult that we would have to bear,” he admitted quietly, “if we wished to proceed with the negotiations. The dwarves own this Mountain, and sometimes it feels like we in Dale only get away with what we can. So yes, in these latter days, we hadn’t — been at our best, in the talks. Thorin was diplomatic when he talked of it today, but it must have been clear to the both of you that we in Dale were angry.

“But the whole time, we — the Dale-men — we had hoped to barter the deal between Umbar and the Mountain, you see?” Bard said. “To bring good trade to you all; to show you we are not unworthy allies. So to be treated like we were also travelers from abroad, or just an afterthought in the dwarves’ business... It didn’t sit right.”

“And you never said anything to me, about this?” Bilbo asked, squinting from the setting sun blazing in his face. “You know: before?”

Bard looked over with a very frank expression. “I would not be saying a word to you about any of this, had you not had your injury. It wouldn’t have been worth bringing up to you, since you were close with the dwarves; you wouldn’t have heard a word against them, or against their interests, however they chose to define them.”

Bilbo noticed it, then: dwarves, not dwarrow.

“I think losing your memories of that time, gaining some distance from those days–” Bard trailed off for a moment, clearly picking over his own words with especial care now that Bilbo’s guard was so visibly raised. “I think it may allow you to understand the difficulty of our relationship with Erebor. Thorin… you won’t remember this, but Thorin was of hard character when you all first arrived for the Mountain. It got worse when the dragon fell. Has he told you about it?”

“He has,” Bilbo said. Hard character… Yes, it certainly called to mind Thorin’s cold disdain for Bilbo on the road to Erebor. Hadn’t Bilbo himself often worried that Bilbo’s Forgetting would cause Thorin to forget why he had come to love the Bilbo-that-was?

Bard gazed at him and sighed. “My memories from those days are… difficult to shake off. It’s hard for me, to trust Thorin, even now. He has done a great deal for us, but when I first met him, I could already guess what he would bring down on our heads, and I dreaded it. I looked at him and I knew: ‘there is one who would destroy my whole life to get what he wants.’ And he did! Laketown is gone. The house that I inherited from my parents, that I made into a home with my wife before she died — it’s nothing but the burnt ends of timbers you can still see if the lake gets low enough. People drowned, burned, and those who didn’t lost everything.”

It would have been an incalculable, life-changing loss, and Bilbo could see, in the shadow of Bard’s speech, Thorin’s suspicions about the menfolk’s prejudice. But it was not an instinctive sort of discrimination, as the word ‘prejudice’ presupposed: the people of Dale may blame the dwarrow for the destruction wrought by Smaug, but Bilbo could not deny that such distrust might be earned, in a way.

Then Bard resettled his posture: a guilty, ambivalent sort of aspect appearing on his face.

“Yet now I am King of Dale,” he acknowledged, tilting his head. “My children are happy, and out from under the Master’s thumb, safer than I could have ever dreamed of keeping them in Laketown. I never need smell the stink of fish or rotting old barrels ever again, if I don’t seek it out. My life has transformed, and I can’t deny it’s for the better. And all of it is due to Thorin Oakenshield. He has done much for my people: returning control of the land of Dale to us when he did not have to, helping us rebuild here and charging us nothing for it, trading with us fairly — generously, even. You have done much of the advocating for Dale, but you have not done all of it, and I know there would be little you or anyone else could do if Thorin said ‘no.’”

“He’s trying.” Bilbo said. It was both a summary of what Bard had said, but also a reminder, Bilbo hoped. Thorin truly was trying.

Bard laughed. “I was going to say the same to you! He is trying. I have been pleased with what I’ve seen from him this visit, in his careful treatment of you. It eases my worries about you up there in the Mountain, no one only on your side. You should know, again: you are always welcome here. We would be pleased to have you stay with us as long as you need.”

This made Bilbo smile. He appreciated the offer very much, as he had already fallen halfway in love, by now, with Bard’s family — and was entirely in love with his lofty little guestroom! But the offer of Dale as a safe haven away from the Mountain echoed what Bard had said a month ago, when he had accompanied Yorick for his apology and bade Bilbo come away to Dale whenever he should need an escape. Bard’s display of hospitality had, at the time, made Thorin tense, visibly fearful.

…At any rate, Bilbo’s calendar was about to balloon with new Consort-ish responsibilities and obligations, so he did not suppose he’d been making it down to Dale for a longer stay in quite some time. At least, not any stay that was not primarily about work.

“And I only meant to thank you,” Bard continued. He tilted forward, hands on the railing, to make sure he caught Bilbo’s eye. “To thank you for raising the question of the numbers with Thorin, not to complain about how things had been done in the past. I see now that none of the dwarves meant ill, and I’m sorry that we said nothing of it to you. We are friends and allies.”

“Of course!” Bilbo cried. “Please, think nothing of it. Thank you for your honesty, to Thorin and to myself. I am glad we can be of service.”

Bard hummed. “What do you say to putting the negotiations on pause, for the time being? You can rest, we can recruit a few more people to the table, and then we can all come back.”

Bilbo wet his lips. He felt flooded with intense gratitude.

“…Just a few months,” he agreed. “Then we start again with a clean slate?”

“Well, I think those guildsmasters of yours would kill us both if we wiped the slate totally clean, started from scratch,” Bard said drily. “But aye. We could reconvene at the end of autumn with clearer heads, and let the closeness bred by winter force us to come to some agreement.”

“I’d like that,” Bilbo said. “Very much.”

Bard smirked a bit, then, and leaned in close, conspiratorially. “And we might even add the elves to the talks! Thranduil is tripping over his great fancy robes to speak to you in your current state, and I don’t think Thorin would begrudge you anything you ask for, at the moment.”

“You don’t say?” Bilbo hedged with a faint smile.

Privately, this last addition by Bard had Bilbo startled: struck by intimidation, on the one hand — at the thought of meeting the Elfking again, whom everyone clearly found very fearsome —and then on the other hand, struck by a bit of affront — that Bard should assume he and Bilbo to be on the same side against Thorin, in this. Maybe the Bilbo-that-was had always been angling to include the Elfking in the negotiations; Bilbo now, of course, couldn’t remember. But to press any advantage against Thorin at the moment, in his lingering guilt and unhappiness over Bilbo’s accident, could feel like nothing other than walking over quite unsteady ground.

Instead of any of this, Bilbo said, “Speaking of my husband! I’d like to go and listen to him play his harp now, if you please.”

And with that, he turned tail and headed back inside, trying not to shudder from the rudeness of ending an important conversation in such an abrupt manner.

--

Bilbo found himself quite restless, later that evening, when at last he was tucked away in his Dalish attic for the night. There had been no bath set out before the fireplace when he arrived upstairs, but Bilbo had still had a wash-up in the refreshed water at the basin and then changed into his nightclothes. The room was cheerily lit with a great wash of candles, which had been brought in and arrayed around the room to chase away the blue hour. By now, it was fully dark and time for bed — or would be, if Bilbo could stop pacing about, fussing with his hung-up clothes and repositioning the pillows upon the sofas.

The midday nap probably hadn’t done him any favors, in terms of getting to sleep, nor had his conversation with Bard, which was still circling his mind just as Bilbo was circling the room. In fact, he realized — halfway through rubbing some of the set-out lotion into his hands for the second time — that he badly wanted to talk the day over with someone. His brain was buzzing with it.

He realized he wanted to talk it through with Thorin.

…Well, that was not so odd! They had been true companions, of late; they spent nearly all their waking hours together — or at least, they had done, before Thorin had needed to return to the business of ruling. And speaking with Thorin tonight could surely be arranged. Bilbo hadn’t even really said good night to his husband, even after he had returned into the Citadel’s hall to hear him on the harp! Thorin had played through the last of the sunset, and then, as if by rote: Bard, and Tilda, and Sigrid, and Bain, and Verthandi, and Balin, and Thorin, and Bilbo had each trooped off one by one to their own rooms without anything more of substance said. It hadn’t seemed strange or unsatisfying until just now, when Bilbo could not escape the feeling that something was missing.

So he put on his robe (one of the new ones from Erebor; patched together from a range of interlocked, curving shapes and in an assortment of patterned pastels, like a field of springtime flowers) and stepped his way out into the hall. Peering about, he wondered if Thorin was up here on the same floor or if there were grander digs below, where one might host a visiting King…

“Bilbo?”

Bilbo whipped around and spotted Verthandi through a doorway that opened into a tiny, darkened room on his right. She was clearly readied for bed, just as Bilbo had been doing, and was ensconced in a set of soft clothing which was admittedly not very far from the trouser-suits that she usually wore. But her face was shining clean and free from her usual cosmetics, and her green hair was held loose in a single untied braid over her shoulder.

She had been right, of course, about the fading color of the dye — there were locks of it that were indeed starting to lean towards the soft, pea-soup color that Bilbo had pictured back when she’d first explained the process. Now it shone golden in the diffuse light of the hallway sconces.

“Are you all right?” Verthandi whispered. “Can I get you something? Balin’s already closed his door for the night, so it’ll have to be me.”

“I was just wondering where I might find Thorin.”

“Oh.” She blinked at him for a moment. “Of course! He’ll be– Well, if you head down these stairs here, go down two floors, and when you come out, he’ll be in the room almost to the end of the corridor, on the left.”

Bilbo could feel that his expression had gone vacant, as it always seemed to when he had to digest prolonged directions, and so he was not surprised when Verthandi asked, “Shall I go with you?”

“No need,” he was quick to assure. “I’ll find him. Only– there are a lot of candles lit in my room. Would you– Wait a moment, I’ll just go blow them out–”

“I can sit with them!” she said. “It’s no trouble.”

“Would you? Thank you; that is very kind. Oh, never mind, you must have your own lit, too!”

“No, I was just about to turn in; they’re all out. I’ll just go sit with yours. Saves us needing to relight them, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, yes! Well, thank you again; I won’t be but a moment…”

Niceties sorted, Bilbo made for the stone spiral staircase towards which Verthandi had gestured — tucked away and separated from the grand stair that led down to the Citadel’s hall – and descended into a more humid darkness, punctuated only occasionally by small glass lamps lit upon the wall. He did his best to follow her directions, but in the end, he wasn’t quite certain which room was Thorin’s, as all of the indistinguishable iron-braced doors at the end of the hallway were closed. He had knocked on two of them, calling “Thorin!” as softly as he could, with no answer — before the third flew open to reveal the King.

Thorin appeared exceedingly surprised, though this was mostly a function of the robe drawn unevenly about his shoulders; clearly he had rushed to the door. Bilbo recognized the robe from Thorin’s side of their royal bedchamber, one of the fleece-lined dressing gowns he had seen hung up in the King’s wardrobe. And, as likewise suggested by the contents of that wardrobe, Thorin was only wearing those drawstring sleep trousers: no shirt beneath the dressing gown.

In an almost identical echo of Verthandi, Thorin asked, urgently, “Bilbo! Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

“No, no!” Bilbo forcibly dragged his eyes up from Thorin’s bare chest to meet his concerned gaze. “I suppose I only wanted to say good night.” And when Thorin merely smiled a little and did not move to the side, Bilbo continued on, blurting out, “And you never told me you could play the harp!”

Thorin’s eyebrows raised, and though his mouth didn’t move, Bilbo dared say that the King looked pleased.

“…Aye,” he said. “I had considered bringing it on the quest, but ultimately I left it behind in Ered Luin. There are others in the Company more talented than I at music-making. Bofur, for one.”

Bilbo laughed, and took advantage of Thorin’s newly relaxed posture to scooch past him, into the King’s borrowed bedchamber. “What are you talking about? You sounded perfectly talented to me!”

“Ah, but that is the curse of living under a dwarven mountain,” Thorin said with a playful sort of sigh. “You are always aware of those things over which you hold no Mastery, for you are surrounded by so many dwarrow who have honed true gifts. It’s why I like to bring the harp down here to Dale. Men are impressed to silence by almost any degree of skill, in a way a dwarf would never be.”

As Thorin talked, Bilbo took a gander about the King’s guestroom. Its walls and floors were constructed of large flagstones in the same sandy stone as the rest of the building, and the space was rather sparsely furnished, with a high and narrow bed sheltered by a simple white canopy, a wooden chair in front of the fireplace — flames banked low — and a porcelain wash basin situated on a table by the window. Those geometrically-carved Dalish shutters were already closed up for the night, and there was but one candle glowing in a mirrored dish at the bedside.

“I would not have thought you got to hear much of my playing tonight,” Thorin commented from behind him, and Bilbo turned so that his back was no longer towards the King. “You were deep in conversation with Bard, I saw.”

That was a leading sort of statement, and Bilbo noted that it didn’t sit entirely easily with Thorin. He had his pale gaze fixed upon the shuttered window, rather than on Bilbo’s face, and had stuffed his hands into the pockets of his robe, which caused his elbows to jut out in a silly sort of angle. It made Bilbo glow warm with affection, both at the awkward figure the King cut and at the way that Thorin was allowing him to dictate how much or how little of the conversation he discussed.

Bilbo didn’t take the out. “Yes, Bard and I did talk! About what you two had discussed this afternoon, while I was resting.”

This openness on Bilbo’s part did not loosen Thorin’s posture. If anything, Thorin held himself more carefully, grew harder to read.

“He said that you’d shared my insight about the parties being so lopsided,” Bilbo clarified, since he could see that Thorin feared learning what Bard had said, for whatever reason. “That was good of you, by the way — to offer to add more negotiators, without strings, and to give me the credit for coming up with it as a solution!”

Thorin shrugged; his posture did ease. “It was no hardship. It was your insight, and we lose nothing but a little control, if we reopen the parties. It seems we will gain more cooperation from the men in return, and who knows? Those who are added to the table may feel they owe us a debt for securing their spot. It’s hardly a sacrifice at all.”

Bilbo hummed. This was a very different tune to the one that the Thorin on the quest had sung. That Thorin would never have loosened his grasp on any scrap of control, for Bilbo knew any security the dwarrow had was unimaginably hard won.

“In the end, it was a misunderstanding, just as you’d said,” Thorin continued. “Dale wanted to be the mediators of any negotiation, had wanted the credit of bringing trade to the Mountain, but we–” Thorin gestured a hand between the two of them. “— you and I — had thought it best, since you had helped them settle their deal first, for you to mediate again between all the men and the Mountain. We saw it as a boon we might offer, a way to ease the process; he saw it as an imposition. So it tends to be, with Bard. Sometimes he sees you, Bilbo, as a friend, and sometimes he sees you as an extension of me.”

“As Consort,” Bilbo corrected, gently. “Acting in an official capacity.”

He hoped to be a little fairer to both Bard and Thorin. He could see now, after the day he’d had, that there was a real and simmering discord between the two, even if there was less prejudice between their peoples than he had feared.

Thorin raised and lowered his eyebrows: the facial equivalent of a shrug. “But his dislike of you taking on that role is personal. He wishes you were not married to me because he has distrusted me from our very first meeting, and his distrust is fair.”

Bilbo’s skin went goosepimpled at the reminder of Thorin’s self-directed anger, the venom of which was apparent but remained, between them, undiscussed. Or maybe it was just the nighttime chill, more pronounced down here than it had been upstairs in Bilbo’s attic.

“…Thorin, I can’t imagine that was entirely your fault,” Bilbo tried. “Even Bard told me he knows you’ve had a hard life, and so it wasn’t– it wasn’t–”

“Be that as it may,” Thorin pressed on, brusquely. His face had taken on a forbidding cast. “I treated Bard ill indeed upon reclaiming the Mountain, and even knowing that, I haven’t been giving the menfolk enough credit as to why they would dislike dwarrow. We brought destruction down upon them twice, when Smaug first claimed the Mountain, and then again when I woke him from his long sleep. I wish I had not given them cause to think so poorly of us, but there it is.”

Bilbo sighed and looked away, curling his toes upon the slightly-damp floor. What Thorin said was fair and not fair, all at once, and Bilbo didn’t know the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff of it all. He longed to get away from the topic.

“So it’s pure luck that I bumbled into the right answer!” Bilbo mused aloud. It made for a good enough change in subject. “Could have been any number of causes, and I just happened to pick the right one.”

Thorin grunted in objection right away, shaking his head with some sternness. “It was not luck!” he insisted. “It was skill, and a willingness to ask me about the unbalanced parties.”

This reproof was not said with the cold approbation of the Thorin from the quest, who could hardly let a single statement pass from Bilbo’s lips without correction. No: Bilbo was startled to realize that this was a Thorin determined that no one above or below earth should sell Bilbo short — not even Bilbo himself. These moments of revelation, showing how much Thorin had come to love him, always sent Bilbo aglow with the queerest mixture of arousal and nerves.

He cleared his throat.

“…Did he really never ask you about that?” At Thorin’s quizzical look, Bilbo clarified, “The old Bilbo. Didn’t he ever point out the lopsidedness of the parties?”

Thorin frowned at him. “No, you didn’t. Not to me. I don’t doubt you noticed it, before the accident, but I am sure I was so forceful in assuming the worst of the men that you dismissed it out of hand.”

Bilbo hummed. It accorded with what Bard had suggested earlier in the day: that Bilbo’s closeness with his dwarven friends had clouded the judgement of the Bilbo-that-was.

Then Thorin’s gaze went warmer, prouder. “And so you see that it pays to consider all angles and not be held hostage to assumptions. Your Forgetting gave you a fresh set of eyes, and you were correct! And so it wasn’t a matter of luck at all.”

Bilbo could feel his mouth quirking up, despite himself. He could admit that he was flattered by Thorin’s compliments and confidence — and well, yes, he did indeed feel quite smug, to have been correct in the end! He was aware that the set of his shoulders had gone square and proud; it reminded him of how powerful he had felt, managing the mood of the menfolk during Yorick’s apology.

Thorin seemed to recognize Bilbo’s contentment, too, if the fond look in his eye was anything to go off of.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” the King asked, dipping his head down. He was wearing that slight, coy sort of smile that bespoke personal questions, as Thorin had put it during their first tour of the residence, and it lent a greater degree of intimacy to this hushed question.

Bilbo blinked, flustered. “What, the– the fix for the negotiations?” He pulled the sleeves of his robe down over his wrists, the better to protect them from the cool humidity of Thorin’s room.

Thorin huffed in amusement. “Aye, that too,” he said, “but I meant: being right.”

And at that, Bilbo barked out a laugh; his heart fluttered, and his cheeks started to go pink, to be caught out so affectionately by his husband.

“You know, this is what it’s like, being Consort,” said Thorin. “You solve problems all the time. You were good at it, and see? You are still good at it.”

By this point, Thorin had started leaning, in a louche sort of fashion, upon his elbow which was propped against the bed. He looked very much as any self-assured gentlehobbit might, leaning up against a fireplace mantle in his smial to light his pipe and toss the match into the grate. It only served to illustrate how absurdly high the mattress was — almost up to Thorin’s shoulder!

This made Bilbo look about himself again, his flustered gaze darting away from Thorin: towards the narrow man-sized bed, to the lonely dwarf-sized chair, to the stone walls shining slick with a sweat of condensation from the hot day turning into the cool night. It all made Bilbo’s lip curl with distaste.

“Well, this is an ill-favored room!” he declared, a bit too loudly. But the clammy atmosphere and poor proportions of the place seemed suddenly inescapable.

“They are still rebuilding down here. We ought to be understanding,” replied Thorin. His voice radiated amusement and indulgence. “What was it you said? ‘Dignity even in entitlement’?”

Bilbo huffed. “Yes, but really — this is no room fit for a King! What were they thinking, placing you in here? I mean, there’s a step stool in front of your wash basin. As if you were a child!”

Thorin snorted and shook his head, though it was clear he did not entirely disagree.

“The family’s rooms are on this floor,” the King said, “and probably aren’t much different.”

“Oh, but they can hardly be appointed like this! Where are the wall hangings, the drapery…? They might have at least put down a rug. No, there must be someplace better suited to you,” Bilbo kept going. “Why, in my own room, there’s quite a lovely–”

But Bilbo stopped before he could gush over the plush little seating area up in the attic, for he had just realized: “Ah. We stay up there together, don’t we? Or we used to.”

Thorin looked a little uncomfortable, and said after a moment, “…Yes. It is a space that was designed with us in mind, when before we have come to stay in Dale.”

Bilbo opened and closed his mouth.

“There was no need–” he started. “No need for you to– You didn’t need to volunteer to be down here, Thorin.”

Thorin snorted again. “It would have been thoughtful of me, indeed, if I had remembered to offer it. But in all honesty, Bilbo, I have been so focused on simply getting through the day that I never gave any thought to where I would sleep tonight. Slipped my mind entirely. But Bard had already set aside this room for me. I will admit that he and I agree on very few things, but luckily, we are of one mind that you and I should now have separate accommodations, and so he helped me avoid any awkwardness that might have come of putting us up in our usual suite, or needing to ask for another room to be made up, with no notice at all.”

By the time Thorin had finished speaking, Bilbo could feel from the stiffness of his own face that he was frowning heavily, and so he took care to loosen up his expression. “That’s– kind of him, I suppose. But it’s very silly that you, the King, were put down here in this man-sized sort of place, and I, the hobbit, was put up where the royalty belongs!”

“Bilbo, you are royalty.” Thorin chuckled; it was a rich and unburdened laugh. “And as a hobbit, you of all people deserve, and can appreciate, comfort! No, there would be no point in putting me up there — not least because Bard and his children love you very much, and could never stand to bring you any degree of discomfort or disadvantage.”

Bilbo absorbed the way in which Thorin seemed entirely untroubled by the whole state of affairs: that as King he should be held in comparative disregard by Bard, who purported to be his kingdom’s closest ally; that it was assumed that he should not be allowed to sleep in the same place as his husband; that there should be very little effort put, it seemed, towards creating a comforting place for him to sleep instead.

To Bilbo, it all seemed suddenly and acutely sad. It was a miserable sort of twin to the heavy, toffee-like warmth that still expanded in his chest whenever he looked Thorin’s way, and Bilbo now felt his eyes growing hot. He screwed up his mouth.

“Well, you can’t stay down here.” He said it without truly realizing what he was proposing, but as it came out, he knew at once that he meant it fully. “It’s horrible. No place at all for a King. Come up and stay in your usual room.”

Thorin blinked and stood up straight, taking his elbow off of the high bed. His eyebrows came down in that fashion that had, on the quest, intimidated Bilbo very badly.

“It’s only one night,” Thorin said, “and I don’t mind.”

“I do.” Bilbo resituated his arms tighter across his chest: both to, again, ward off the chill of the room and to appear more authoritative. “I mind, and I won’t have you staying here.”

Thorin still hesitated. “Thank you, Bilbo, but I will be perfectly happy–”

“I don’t like everyone telling us what to do, thinking they know our business,” Bilbo interrupted, sharpish. “And Balin and Ori would have us giving everybody a good old story about our enduring love, which won’t be served by us sleeping apart with you in such dreadful conditions. Servants talk. Bard didn’t do the tale any favors putting you down here, but I won’t fuel rumors by letting it lie. Now: upstairs, if you please. Quick as you like. Do you need to bring anything with you?”

Thorin gaped down at him, and Bilbo met his gaze and tried not to feel cowed. He repeated to himself what Thorin had just more or less told him: Bilbo was royalty, and people liked him, and he deserved to be listened to. Thorin himself had suggested that Bilbo deserved to be listened to.

Still, after a long moment of silence, Bilbo’s mouth pulled flat with uncertainty, in the face of Thorin’s silent disagreement. He looked away.

“…Just the candle,” Thorin said at last. His voice sounded faint. “I’ll– get it. And then we can go.”

“Your spectacles?”

“I won’t be reading. But thank you.”

Thorin did retrieve the candle in its little dish, and then they were out the door. Even the cool hallway outside felt noticeably warmer and drier than Thorin’s room. Bilbo was glad to get his feet off of those slimy floors. In fact, as they walked in silence, he felt the skin of his face shifting from chilled to positively flushed: not only from the prospect of what he and Thorin would do once they arrived upstairs, but also from Bilbo’s frustration at the situation.

It was hard to accept that there could have been no outcome from their accommodations that would have been entirely to his liking, no way that Bilbo could have navigated the challenge of their stay with complete grace. It would indeed have made him uncomfortable, to have it assumed that he and Thorin would be sharing a room and a bed in an unfamiliar location, and so it was good of Bard to anticipate this awkwardness. But neither could Bilbo quite claim to be pleased, to have the menfolk make the assumption — nay, the decision! — that he would not want to share a room with Thorin at all. And what’s more, he would have not have liked to be the one forced to make the decision himself: to have been asked to decide where they each ought to sleep; to have everyone peering down as he himself exiled Thorin to that damp and cavernous room.

There was no outcome that would have totally avoided discomfort, but he could at least prevent Thorin’s discomfort now.

When they arrived in the attic room, it was as lovely as Bilbo had left it: perhaps even lovelier, when compared with Thorin’s guestroom and the stony hallways. The wood floor was still warm from the daytime heat, but this was balanced by the lazy breeze filtering in through the screened windows. The strange claggy chill of Thorin’s room was nowhere to be found.

Verthandi, he could see, had perched herself upon one of the very sofas that Bilbo had been so excited to describe to Thorin. She had one leg slung over the other, and one of her slippers dangled from the foot that was bobbing in the air, following a lazy sort of rhythm. At the sound of their entrance, she turned her head their way with a vacant sort of smile, but this expression was replaced by a look of bare surprise when she saw there were two of them in the doorway.

“Your Majesty! …sties. Majesties.” She cleared her throat, and then leapt to her feet. She struggled, once standing, to get the dangling slipper securely back onto her foot, and so Bilbo and Thorin spent a moment watching her make an awkward twisting sort of motion to get her footwear resituated.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on the candles, Verthandi,” Bilbo said, once he remembered to.

“Oh, it was no work at all!” Everything back in place, she crossed the room towards them. Her brows were raised up very high, and her eyes were wide, and she looked only at Bilbo. “Are you– Do you have everything you need?”

Her expression suggested a degree of urgency and familiarity, as if there was something she were trying to communicate without saying it aloud. It was obviously something about Thorin. The whole thing annoyed Bilbo, a bit — he no longer knew Verthandi well enough to immediately intuit what such a look might mean, and anyway, Thorin was right next to the both of them, with working eyesight, and would surely notice that he was being alluded to!

So Bilbo blustered, “Yes, yes, thank you for asking. But now it’s time for us to head to bed,” and held out an arm to gesture her out the door.

“All right,” she said, hesitating. “In that case, would you like my help putting out the lights?”

Bilbo paused and sighed. So on top of it all, he had made her wait up here for naught. “…Yes. I’m sure that would be helpful.”

In truth, between the three of them, it took very little time to extinguish all the candles. Bilbo handled the cluster in the fireplace, and when he turned back to the room at large, it was quite dim; by the time he had moved towards the bed and the door, the only light in the room was the candle that Thorin had carried in, and Verthandi was already almost over the threshold.

Still she lingered. “If that’s everything…?”

Her expression no longer held that layer of badly-disguised significance, but she still looked only at Bilbo, eyes skirting Thorin entirely. Bilbo tried to remind himself that Verthandi was his employee, and not beholden to Thorin’s orders. All the same, Bilbo remembered how he had assumed, in the Infirmary, that Verthandi was operating under Thorin’s say-so, regarding the way Bilbo ought to be handled. Now it seemed to him that no one listened much to King Thorin at all.

My word, Bilbo thought, startled by his own irritability — though he shouldn’t have been, perhaps. His hackles were raised easily these days. It had been less complicated when he had assumed everyone here in the North was simply doing whatever they wanted, of their own accord; it was harder, to realize that they were in fact trying to do favors for Bilbo. He had yet to sort how to simply be grateful for the help.

Bilbo cleared his throat. “Yes, I think we’re quite set for the evening. Good night!” His voice had gone a little tight, and so he smiled to make up for it, though he doubted the smile looked any less stiff than his voice sounded.

“If you need anything, I’m right down the hall.”

“Yes, thank you, Verthandi. Off you go; sleep well.”

With Bilbo’s apprentice out the door, there was a beat of almost unbearable silence, before Thorin went over to the left side of the bed, which was indeed the side that Bilbo tended not to use himself. Bilbo followed suit, taking off his robe and tugging the covers down and climbing in with determined nonchalance. Once he was as comfortable as he was liable to get, he couldn’t help glancing over at Thorin — only to see that he was still fully ensconced in his fleece-lined robe, the bulk of which was bunched up high against the pillows.

“Oh, Thorin, you can’t wear that all night!” Bilbo could not help but exclaim. His chest was starting to feel giddy from the ludicrousness of the whole situation. Everything seemed a little unreal. “It’s the dog days of summer. Please, take it off, or you’ll overheat.”

Obediently, Thorin got back out of bed and shucked the robe from off his shoulders, hanging it upon one of the hooks set in the plaster beside his half of the bed. Bilbo had already done the same with his own robe upon his own hooks before settling in — though this left him in a quite respectable nightshirt, as opposed to Thorin’s set of drawstring trousers and no shirt to speak of. The trousers were as silky as the outside of the robe, and rode low upon the King’s hips. When Thorin pivoted back towards the bed, Bilbo allowed himself just a moment to fully admire the soft thickness of Thorin’s front — the heft of his shoulders and his arms, the whorls of dark hair all down his chest, the dip where the swell of his hip met the plush curve of his belly — before turning his gaze down to fuss with his own nightshirt sleeves.

Bilbo had selected and packed this nightshirt himself, but Thorin had helped with the rest of the packing. Thorin had indeed helped him choose the entirety of his wardrobe for this stay: one outfit for walking through Dale, one less formal for dinner, a traveling set for tomorrow, and a spare suit just in case. But Bilbo had added all that was private to his luggage: his underthings, his toiletries, his nightshirt.

Bilbo had been having mixed luck with his nightshirts in Erebor, in all honesty. Most were both unobjectionable and unexciting. He tended to move through them in a mechanical sort of fashion, swapping out for a clean one every few evenings, putting away those that were freshly laundered whenever Nils left his cleaned clothes stacked next to the wardrobe (just as he had apparently left out Bilbo’s bloodied suit from that fateful day in Dale — the one still crammed at the back of said wardrobe, studiously ignored by Bilbo but sadly not forgotten).

All the same: one night, Bilbo had encountered a nightshirt that was rather confusing. It was crafted of a very gauzy white linen down to his calves, with an extremely deep opening at the neck, laden with heavy, woven tassels in blue and green and purple weighing down the ties that would hold the shirt shut.

It had looked so strange when Bilbo unfolded it that he spent a long while trying to figure out exactly how it was meant to fit. First, he tried it with the deep opening facing front, but that looked so ridiculous that Bilbo laughed to see himself reflected in Thorin’s wardrobe mirror: his belly awkwardly on display, crotch barely hidden, wide sleeves flapping about with the closures unfastened. He next tried pulling the neck open over his shoulders, but this looked just as laughable, with the collar spread taut in an odd and unflattering stretch.

It wasn’t until he tossed the heavy tassels over his shoulder that he had started to realize how the shirt might actually mean to hang. The way the tassels draped down his back made him slowly turn the nightshirt around, so that the high collar was situated in front, and the deep, deep dip lay down his back. The sight of that in the mirror made him very slowly tie up the neck and button closed the wide cuffs — a pleasant constraint against the sensitive skin of his wrists, stiff with embroidery to match the colorful tassels — so that the delicate gauze draped transparently about his body, and his back remained tantalizingly exposed but only half-suggested through the fall of linen, and the embroidered tassels dripped down from his nape, trembling in the open space created by the small of his back.

Well, clearly the nightshirt was meant for titillation, and not much for sleeping!

What had happened next Bilbo wasn’t necessarily proud of, but he thought he might be forgiven for it; after all, it had been a long, long time since he could remember finding any release, by his own hand or anyone else’s. And it wasn’t really the sight of himself, so enticingly wrapped up before Thorin’s mirror, that made him take himself in hand! It was the thought that this nightshirt clearly played some part in his and Thorin’s bed business; that Thorin surely liked the sight of Bilbo like this, his body both bound up and hinted at. So, yes: Bilbo had clamored up onto his marriage bed, had rucked up the seductive little nightshirt over his hips, and had sank his mind into the sort of fantasy he had oft been turning over on the road to Erebor, without any chance back then of doing something about it.

The fantasy always played out in some variation like this: it would be in Bag End, and it would be late. He’d be alone, putting away all of his dishes and shutting up his empty pantry, just as he had done when the Company first came to call. He had been angry and disgruntled at that point in the evening, irritated at the Company’s disruption of both his nighttime routine and his manners, forcing him to be so rude in his scolding and herding and huffing and puffing. In this fantasy — a version of that first night in his smial — he would still be stewing in that irritation when he’d turn around in his pantry and find Thorin standing behind him, looming.

In Bilbo’s imagination, Thorin would come in close, eyes serious but not quite disdainful: only smoldering, utterly self-possessed. The heat of his body would emanate all along Bilbo’s front as he lifted his strong arms to rest against the pantry shelving, caging Bilbo up flush with the wall.

And Bilbo’s irritation would convert to nervousness, making him simultaneously jumpy and still: like a rabbit stared at by a wolf — almost sure he was beneath the wolf’s notice, but terrified and thrilled to think he might be on the menu. Bilbo’s head would swim, and he would shiver when Thorin pressed up close against him, and his arms would go limp and useless at his sides (though his fist had been, in reality, working steadily upon his prick in his royal bed).

And Thorin, in his closeness, would draw the point of his nose — his lovely, regal nose — up Bilbo’s cheek, just brushing the skin, his lips so near and so far–

And Thorin wouldn’t kiss him. No. He would keep Bilbo sensitized to the distance between their mouths. Instead, Thorin would take one of his large, sure hands and he would cup it low over Bilbo’s jaw, and then he would clutch, pressing his fingers into the plush of one cheek and notching his thumb into the give of the other, easing — urging — Bilbo’s mouth to open wetly–

And Bilbo’s lips would feel soft and heavy, and his tongue would lie fat and idle in his mouth, useless for the time being but ready to do whatever Thorin wanted of it (not so, in real life, where Bilbo’s tongue had been tensed against his teeth and his mouth was grimaced from the pleasure of his quickly-moving hand).

And then Thorin would look down at Bilbo’s lax face, at his open, wanting mouth caught up in the confident clasp of Thorin’s strong hand.

And Bilbo’s breath would come heavy, then, and his throat would bob from the effort of a thick, trembling swallow.

And Thorin would watch that, with his cool blue eyes, and — with the hand holding Bilbo’s jaw — Thorin would press Bilbo downwards– draw him downwards– encourage him, guide him, force him down onto his knees, first only with that hand cradling his jaw, then with his other hand cradling the back of Bilbo’s head, in a way that would be rough if Thorin were not so sure of himself, and which would be gentle if only his gaze held a smidge more tenderness.

And one of his feet — covered in boots dusty from the Shire’s roads, tracking dirt all through Bilbo’s home! — would nudge Bilbo’s knees apart (just as Bilbo’s legs had been spreading at that point, on the bed, his hips working up into the motion of his hand).

And then Thorin would stand over Bilbo kneeling before him in Bag End’s pantry, and he would loosen the lace-front of his own trousers. He wouldn’t hurry about it, either: pulling one-handed at each crossing thread as if he had all the time in the world. His other hand would move down to rest with impassive pressure upon the side of Bilbo’s neck.

And oh, the thought of that! The thought of Thorin’s weighty palm over the most sensitive part of Bilbo’s throat, Thorin’s hand big enough to let his fingers linger there whilst reaching his thumb up to dip past Bilbo’s lips at the same time, sinking his thumb into Bilbo’s mouth, heavy over his wanting tongue– Thorin’s other hand toying lazily with the placket of his own trousers, not revealing anything for Bilbo’s hungry eyes–

And Bilbo would strain forward to try his luck. He’d open his mouth wider– take more of Thorin’s thumb if it meant he might get a chance at Thorin’s cock–

But Thorin would hold him there, keeping him close but also holding him back, keeping him away– as if Bilbo had not yet proven he wanted it enough– as if Bilbo didn’t yet deserve it–

That thought — the thought of wanting it so badly, of Thorin holding Bilbo back from the prize of his cock with a shadow of his usual, cool disdain–!

Well, it had sent Bilbo shooting, there in his royal, Ereborean bed, sure enough.

…Now, here in their shared guest bed in Dale, it only seemed to Bilbo that such an image of Thorin — implacable and inscrutable, with no ounce of sentimentality to spare for a hobbit — was very different from the Thorin who had been by his side all day, the one who was attentive, acquiescent, respectful. Where the imagined Thorin in Bilbo’s pantry had seemed so appealing in his height and harshness, the real Thorin had looked so small next to all of the big mannish furniture, had played his harp this evening so that no one would need talk to him. And neither of those Thorins were quite right, either: not really. Not the surly Thorin he had invented wholesale from his disgruntled memories of that first night in Bag End, nor the Thorin who had been shadowing him all through Dale, who (Bilbo realized) hadn’t expressed a single thought of his own in company all day.

No, the realest and rightest Thorin was the one next to him this very moment, who shifted a bit just then and so sent the light summer coverlet sliding over both of their shoulders where they lay facing away from each other.

Bilbo sniffed. He tried to keep his legs still, to avoid interesting his cock — slightly stiffened from the memory of his fantasy — any further in the warmth of Thorin behind him. Bilbo recalled, abruptly, that there were two sofas just across the room, and both were surely long enough for either Thorin or Bilbo to stretch themselves out and go to sleep, alone. But it felt too late, and Thorin’s presence felt too appealing, to say anything about that now.

They both lay there in a tense silence.

When Bilbo had been on the road to Erebor — and his habitual loneliness hadn’t been so much nipping at his heels as sinking its fangs into his neck, surrounded as he was with people who wouldn’t talk to him — he had tended to dwell on how the whole quest would be over soon enough, and then he could go home. He would be back at Bag End in no time: feeling safe, warm, peaceful, and full. That thought had been as soothing and numbing as rubbing ice on a burn, and he had applied the thought to his misery on the road in just the same way, repeating again and again: You’ll just go home. You’ll just go home. This will all be over, and you’ll just go home.

Now, Bilbo frowned to notice something similar going on in his head: a sequence of thought he heard himself repeat to fill the space between his ears, hollowed out of all sense now that Thorin was lying there behind him. They were married, and so the fact was that he could just ask Thorin to have sex with him, right now. It echoed through his skull, both tempting and frightening. You could just ask for a tumble. Right now. Right now. We’re in bed together. You could just ask. You could just ask. Right now. You could just ask.

What was the worst that could happen? Nothing world-ending, surely. All that the Thorin from the quest might have said was, Don’t touch me; how dare you. You forget yourself, Master Baggins.

Not likely, based on how sweet Thorin had been lately. Yes, the quiet and attentive Thorin of today in Dale would surely say, Yes, yes, treasure, dearest — now it can all go back to how it was. We can return to a life worth living.

But Bilbo had just thought to himself that the silent, acquiescent Thorin was not the real Thorin, either, and that all seemed a bit much, anyway, and a lot of pressure, too.

Most realistically, Thorin would simply say, We can, if you want. Are you sure?

No. Bilbo wasn’t sure.

“Candle out?” Thorin asked, abruptly enough that Bilbo startled and rocked the mattress rather badly.

“Yes, please,” he said immediately, to try and cover it up. He hadn’t even realized that the flame was still lit, turned away from Thorin’s side as he was and caught up so in his circling thoughts. They were dispelled now like popped bubbles, and so the urge to press his luck passed.

Bilbo shrugged the coverlet even further up his shoulders, to cover himself to the ears. He was glad he wasn’t the one who would have to sit up to deal with the candle, as the rocking of the mattress hadn’t helped the situation with his prick. Nor did the sound of Thorin blowing out the light, really: a little breathy whoo.

When the room went completely dark, Bilbo made sure to say, “Good night,” and it hardly sounded strangled at all.

“Good night,” said Thorin, right back: huge and unknowable in the dark.

--

The Mountain boasted a truly astronomical number of places where a dwarf might take their food; in fact, most dwarrow did not cook for themselves at all. This meant there were public houses and restaurants and food halls and dessert carts and specialty shops and kiosks and stands and booths, all offering an unimaginable range of readymade foodstuffs across the great breadth and depth of Erebor. And on the night of Bilbo’s first visit to the guildsmasters in their Hall, three days after the King and Consort had returned from Dale, Thorin declared they should celebrate afterwards by visiting one of the Mountain’s finer establishments.

The visit to the Guilds Hall was Bilbo’s first time interacting with a group of dwarrow who were not the Company, and who had no real connection to the Company. Admittedly, Bilbo had gotten rather mixed up, at first, thinking they were visiting the much-storied Court: that den of aristocrats he had heard mentioned now by Dis and Fili and Kili and Thorin and Balin and Verthandi and maybe everyone else, too. But when Bilbo asked about how best to conduct himself during this trip to Court, Thorin had only laughed.

“No, no,” the King had said. “These are the guildsmasters! The Court draws from the Seven Kindreds, those bloodlines descending from the Seven Fathers which have amassed the most power and sway over the centuries: the Longbeards, the Broadbeams, the Firebeards, the Ironfists, the Blacklocks, the Stiffbeards, and the Stonefoots —”

(Here Bilbo had grimaced, foreseeing the need for a mnemonic.)

“— but the Guilds Hall is comprised of those Masters of each craft, elected from their ranks to represent their peers under the Mountain. Their number might include nobility, or might not. Depends on the year.”

Bilbo supposed this made sense. It was the same as the way the Tooks governed Tuckburough and the Brandybucks governed Buckland — but no one from the old Shire families would ever think to run for Mayor of Hobbiton, or of Michel Delving. It was not the done thing! Those positions should represent the working hobbits; everyone must have their own offices.

In any case, the visit itself — to a meeting of the guildsmasters — had been a strange experience.

Before they had all made their way into the Guilds Hall, there had been a period for everyone to mix and mingle, to which Thorin and Bilbo as monarchs had generously been invited. As Bilbo had moved through the crowd, smiling and having his hand shaken again and again, he reminded himself that the guildsmasters (and dwarrow in general) surely did not mean to be not rude — they were not hobbitish, but that did not mean they were rude. Bilbo reminded himself repeatedly, throughout the many re-introductions to the guildsmasters, that he had often himself found hobbitish talk disingenuous and uninteresting. He reminded himself again and again that he had endlessly, in the Shire, longed for something that would feel more real! Still, the guildsmasters’ questions had been —

Well, they had reminded Bilbo keenly of Kili’s questions upon his and Dis and Fili’s first admittance to Bilbo’s sickroom.

Now, I hear the fall was not a thing of beauty, not at all… How did it feel, to wake up afterwards? Does it still hurt?

You do look to’ve lost muscle, haven’t you? Gained weight? Aye, but I guess you look well enough, all things considered!

Are you getting your memories back? Which ones? You must have one to share!

…Ah. Do you think you will? I wonder what’ll happen if you don’t! But you’ve always taken good notes, your Majesty; I’ve seen you scribbling down our words on more than one occasion, to catch us out with later. So I can’t imagine the work’ll be affected — gifts that Mahal gives, and all!

What about new memories; are you making those?

Are you taking anything for it? My grandfather swore by spoonfuls of fish oil, for good memory–

You look confused; are you confused? And tense!

And of course, one guildsmaster did ask: let’s see the scar, shall we?

He asked it privately, conspiratorially, breaking in whilst Bilbo had paused for a moment to reorient himself amidst the crowd. Bilbo was surprised at how deeply shocking he found the question! And he could not be sure that he would have been so shocked, if Dis had not assured him back in his sickroom that everyone would know not to ask: the Court knows you would never allow such an impertinence.

But Thorin had said this was not the Court. Did that make a difference? Bilbo did not know. He had stared at the guildsmaster and wondered if he should say something– wondered if it would be wrong not to say something. After all, he had presumably been stern about matters of etiquette before, if the Court knew what he did and did not consider too much familiarity! Would it cause a scene? Should he be hoping that it caused a scene? He felt simultaneously as if he and the nosy guildsmaster were utterly alone, despite the crowd, and as if all the dwarrow in Erebor were now watching him, as they had been in the Throne Room.

Eventually, Bilbo let out the breath he had been holding, responded with a firm No, I’d rather not, and turned away to speak with the very next guildsmaster that caught his eye. It was a safer bet, he figured, than leaving the room in a huff, and less humiliating than giving in and parting his hair, letting everyone peer down at his naked, pokey little scar.

Thorin had reassured Bilbo afterwards, when the hobbit had exclaimed over the encounter: “They’re treating it like a war wound. Giving you an opportunity to tell your story and share how it’s been difficult. Hobbits like to complain, too, you’ve told me.”

Bilbo thought that was fair enough — but this was something much too big for most hobbits to feel comfortable asking after, or complaining about! It was no arthritis or lumbago or seasonal chill. It would be like asking casually after a lost arm!

…Well. Bilbo did realize that was what most war wounds were, or at least seemed to be, from his limited and secondhand experience: lost limbs and ill-healed wounds and life-altering pain. But if a hobbit did have experience with that sort of thing, they certainly wouldn’t share it! It would need to be covered up, or — if it were a Forgetting, and therefore both invisible and universally talked-about — it should at least be ignored in public as gracefully as possible, especially amongst mixed company. Everyone would gossip, of course, as was their right. But they should not do so to your face.

It had taken so much energy, and such a deep degree of fortitude, to say no, right out in the open, and then walk away. But when likewise Bilbo had tried to explain this to Thorin afterwards, the King had simply shrugged.

“Then don’t say no next time, if you don’t want to. The matter doesn’t need to be private. And if you let people see, you might get a ballad out of it! You’ve got enough songs for a concert now, I imagine.” And then Thorin had laughed, and Bilbo had chuckled uneasily right alongside.

The rest of the guildsmasters’ session had been bewildering to Bilbo, but it didn’t seem to have gone poorly. After the social hour, everyone had taken their seats in the Guilds Hall, where there were benches arranged on risers along three sides of the room. Bilbo and Thorin had gone to sit up in two chairs — thrones, Bilbo supposed; they were thrones if they were set aside for the King and Consort’s use — towards the front, surveyed by all. And there the monarchs had been asked questions. Or, rather: Bilbo had been asked questions, to which he had not been able to summon answers.

The session had been designated for the discussion of the proposed changes to the mannish negotiations, which had been formalized and circulated by Balin after the monarchs’ return from Dale. Having talked it over with only Thorin and Bard, Bilbo had forgotten that there were still those 68 guildsmasters to contend with and attempt to content. But now — after sitting at the receiving end of their umbrage — Bilbo did not think he would be able to forget again. He understood more and more what Thorin had meant, when he had described the considerable accomplishment of turning away more than fifty of these dwarrow from a role in the talks.

In other words, the pushback on the inclusion of more menfolk within the trade discussions was forceful. There were concerns raised about the lengthening timeline of the deal, what with the approaching autumn and the long winter thereafter. There were aspersions cast upon the fairness and wisdom of introducing even more voices into negotiations widely considered to be at near complete deadlock. There were insults and jokes and provocations shouted across the room, with a great deal of laughter and griping and hollers of agreement from the rest of the assembly. The meeting was loud. While it did not seem dangerous, Bilbo couldn’t help but flinch more often than not, in the face of all the interjections bellowed from one side of the hall to the others.

And Bilbo himself had been the primary target of these interjections. He could understand why: the Bilbo-that-was had been the sometime mediator of the negotiations, and Bilbo-as-he-was-now had only just reviewed all of the notes from the talks, had just reassessed all the perspectives, had been the one to recommend the change that might dislodge the deadlock. But the raucousness of the room made it impossible to focus on his reasons for suggesting the changes, had made it impossible to organize his thoughts into any argument. It had left him without a thing to say, his stuttering voice dried up in his throat like rattling poppy seeds dried up in their pods.

This had happened before, the first time he had attended a party in the Shire after the deaths of his parents. Bilbo had been playing the recluse in Bag End for more than a year, at that point, but everyone had hoped he might give a speech at the party as the new Master of the Hill: nothing long, but ceremonious enough to provide the Hobbiton chattering class a chance to welcome him and bolster him both. But Bilbo had found himself standing beneath the Party Tree and before his neighbors without any words at all. Mayor Pott had needed to come save him when all Bilbo could muster were four throat-clearings in a row.

No one had been unkind to him over it — everyone agreed that it must have been too soon for him to be out and about, full year of solitude be damned — but it had been awkward. It was rather more awkward in Erebor’s Guild Hall, of course, where Bilbo was faced with furrowed brows and snarling mouths instead of pitying frowns and avoided glances, only. But it proved that in this, matters were the same in Erebor as they were in the Shire: if you could withstand the way that loss at first made everything in your life hopeless, you were rewarded with a long stretch of time in which loss made everything in your life awkward.

Thorin hadn’t seemed thrown, in any case, up there in front of the Hall. And he did all of the talking to boot, whilst Bilbo sat, stiff and silent, fidgeting with the chains sewn into his righthand jacket pocket as subtly as he could manage. Thorin did a very good job, really, for all that this seemed to be ruling from a throne than making a deal over a forge (Thorin having said he preferred the latter). Bilbo supposed that the way Thorin had held himself — leaning forward over his spread knees, gesturing with a pointed finger, letting his long hair swing freely with the movement of his body — and the manner in which he openly scoffed at the qualms of his guildsmasters was not wholly regal.

But all the same: he had appeared to Bilbo fully in his element.

So: no, it had not been a complete disaster. “It’s just the first volley,” Thorin attested to Bilbo afterwards, as they were walking from the Hall and towards the carriage that would take them to their promised dinner celebration. “And not one so strong as I had feared it would be.”

“Not as strong!” Bilbo had exclaimed hoarsely, attempting to resuscitate his voice after it had lain dead the whole session.

Thorin laughed. “Aye. You were surprised before too, when the Guilds Hall at Erebor first reconvened after the reclamation, at how intensely they argue. You always referred to it as ‘that disagreeable place.’” Thorin sighed, an affectionate sound. “But the entire point of the Guild’s Hall is to decide matters of labor and commerce with words rather than axes. Each of those guildsmasters, by now, could be said to have a Mastery in argument as well as in their chosen craft, and it’s no shame to simply hold your own against the expertise of a Master. We did well.”

It was kind of Thorin to say “we,” since of course Bilbo had done nothing at all and yet still found the whole thing to have been very… very effortful. And while Bilbo’s mind now skittered away from the remembered cacophony and open discord of the Hall just as he would avoid a dark alleyway in Bree, he couldn’t help but return to that moment of being asked to share his scar before the session. Bilbo was still thinking about it, in fact, as they sat in the carriage, putting distance between themselves and the Hall.

He remembered looking that guildsmaster in the eye after he’d asked to see the wound, before Bilbo had made any reply. He recalled feeling a great, welling anger towards the fellow, for asking such a question.

…No, not just anger: resentment. It rankled Bilbo that the guildsmaster had asked, and that Bilbo had been forced to say no. Whatever Thorin claimed, Bilbo had indeed wanted to say no! But more than that, he had wanted not to be asked; he resented being asked. The guildmaster should have known better. Dis, when she had visited, had suggested that Ereboreans would know not to ask — but still, this fellow had! He had asked!

So in that moment, when Bilbo had glared at the guildsmaster: he had meant it to wound — had wanted his outrage to burn straight through in his gaze.

Ah, well. Bilbo doubted his resentment had gotten across, and anyway, he would have felt terribly guilty, in the end, if the fellow had noticed. Thankfully, the guildsmaster probably wouldn’t ever think on the exchange again. But Bilbo was still worrying over it: worrying not just about the act of saying no, but about how much energy it had taken, how much nerve, over something so small, something that he should have been able to deny and think nothing of denying, something he should be able to brush off, nothing compared to the pressure of the Guilds Hall, such a small part of the job, such a passing thing, if he really were monarch, and really did rule over these people, and really did have a say, had the say–

But no matter!

Now that business was behind him.

Now Bilbo and Thorin were ‘going out to eat,’ a practice which Bilbo took to correspond with the act of going down to the local public house for a meal and a pint, whenever you didn’t care to cook for yourself but didn’t have a dinner party lined up for the evening, either.

“Did we like this place before?” Bilbo asked in the carriage ride to the restaurant, making his voice pleasant and light. He’d realized some time back that Thorin was doling out experiences for him left and right: clearly attempting to awaken some familiarity in Bilbo and treat him to something nice, all at the same time.

But Thorin had shaken his head. “I have never been here before, and I don’t believe you had either.”

Bilbo had tried not to look too pleased, but he found this very heartening news: that the location should be entirely novel for the both of them.

“It opened fairly recently,” Thorin had continued. “Torsk — the Master Cook — emigrated from the Grey Mountains, and his food has garnered quite a ‘buzz,’ as you would say. So I thought we could learn for ourselves why it’s so popular. You have, after all, taught me how to enjoy food in our time together.”

And Bilbo smiled, recalling Thorin’s eagerness to sample the deceptively dangerous seedcakes and the way there had been refreshments set up just off the Throne Room, a treat after a hard day’s work.

So now here they were, walking through the entrance of a building that honestly appeared too official and somber, for a pub, Bilbo thought — but it did seem to be the dwarven way, to always be more stately than necessary! Bilbo believed he was at least dressed for such a chic location, having put on for the Guilds Hall a matching jacket and trousers of black jacquard, woven through with metallic geometric patterns in green and gold. Thorin had suggested the outfit be paired with either a smart black neckerchief or a frothy white cravat; Bilbo had gone with the black neckerchief, though the competition truly had been neck and neck (ha!). Thorin, meanwhile, was dressed to match in an ensemble of dark green.

It was still an unexpected and melting sort of pleasure, to Bilbo, that Thorin should dress himself to match Bilbo’s preferences.

They were met in the vestibule by an eager and youthful sort of fellow, who greeted the both of them with a deep bow.

“Good evening, your Majesties,” he said. He was dressed very simply and in dark blue, but Bilbo noticed the glitter of golden cosmetic upon the dark skin of his sparsely bearded cheeks. “Thank you for your attendance this evening. My name is Leif, son of Leir. Allow me to show you to your table.”

Leif, son of Leir, gestured them through a curtained doorway, and they three passed into a room that looked a bit like the Green Dragon, though simultaneously bigger and more intimate. It was dimly lit just as the Dragon was, evidently to encourage relaxation and familiarity, but the ceilings here were easily four times as high as that old Shire pub’s were! There was no bar for pulling drinks, and instead of long wooden trestles, all of the many tables scattered about the room were small and covered with pristine white linens.

And every single one of these tables hosted a small party of dwarrow. Bilbo made a few unintentional zings of eye contact before settling his gaze resolutely and neutrally ahead of himself.

He and Thorin were led through the herd of white-clad tables to one that seemed especially picturesque and inviting: set on a little, curtained dais within an elaborately blue-tiled nook. Bilbo noted the sparseness of the table setting — unfamiliar, that. There were only two large napkins, one folded in front of each chair: no cutlery, condiments, or centerpiece.

With a sigh, Bilbo arranged himself in the seat that Thorin had not chosen. In truth, his body ached. His sleep had been uniformly dissatisfying, ever since returning to his big, empty bed after that one night in Dale, and this fatigue was now compounded by a cricked neck, sore from sitting broomstick-straight at the front of the Guilds Hall.

But Bilbo didn’t dare slouch, mindful as he was of the eyes of all their fellow supper-goers. They didn’t stare, precisely, but everyone seemed to glance and smile their way up from their array of tables. Bilbo had hoped that the nook might provide a sense of remove, but the dining room was only partially obscured from Bilbo’s view by a set of velvet curtains that Leif was even now pulling slightly shut. This left their table entirely on display, the drapery providing more of a frame for their conversation than any degree of privacy.

Turning back from his task with the curtains, Leif began speaking with the same gravity that Ori had used to describe the life of Durin and Thorin’s triumph over the White Orc.

“Tonight’s meal,” he intoned, “is an exploration of culinary preservation. We will celebrate and subvert almost the full range of processes that prolong the consumption of victuals and foodstuffs. The courses will be served with cold water, only. But I can take a drink order, should you like one before the meal is served?”

Well, now! This made Bilbo perk up with unfeigned eagerness. He found that he was quite ready to have a real drink, after the stressful day he’d had and the long weeks before that with no alcohol whatsoever!

“I will take a generous pour of wine, if you please!” Bilbo placed what he hoped was an encouraging amount of stress upon the word generous; he wanted something stronger and more sophisticated than the Dalish smallbeer he’d had with Bard’s family. “A gregarious red, if you have one. More convivial than chatty, I think, for tonight.”

At this, Leif looked down at him, eyes squinted ever so slightly, visibly combing through Bilbo’s words and coming up short.

Bilbo tried to clarify: “The vintage doesn’t have to be ruminative, but I would like it to be fairly earnest. If you please.”

Rather than clearing matters up, this seemed to make them actively worse; Leif now looked worried, rather than merely flummoxed. Bilbo found himself glancing at Thorin, who also looked extremely puzzled.

“…No matter!” Bilbo said after another stretch of silence. “You can just bring me whatever red you have nearest to hand.”

“No, Bilbo,” Thorin said quickly. He banished the confusion from his expression. “We would like you to have what you want to drink. Just: how… would you like the wine to look? To taste?”

Bilbo hesitated for a moment, realizing that they had no idea what he was talking about. He cleared his throat. He supposed it could not hurt to try and be– be very literal?

“Well. I want it to be dark. And I want it to taste forward– um. Well? Savory, I suppose?”

The waiter nodded slowly. “Saline,” he suggested, “and iron, rather than the sweetness of lead. Very good. And for your Majesty?” He looked back to Thorin.

The King smiled. “I will have a milk stout.”

Leif seemed relieved to receive a more easily decipherable order, and hurried off after sketching another bow to each of them.

Bilbo could feel himself grimacing and pulled his face back to a more neutral state, clearing his throat once more.

“So,” Thorin said. “The Shire describes wines in terms of speech! That is fitting, indeed, for hobbit folk.”

“Is it?” Bilbo asked, voice a little strained. He could appreciate that Thorin was trying to ease his embarrassment, but: “It seems rather silly to me, at present.”

“Not at all. I know how important the nuances of speech are to your people. You were telling me even just the other day how much more you glean from my phrasing than I intend. It does not surprise me that we dwarrow would have different words to suggest nuance, different likenings-to, even when it comes to wine.”

Bilbo hummed, and then — curious — he asked, “You’ve never heard me talk wine before?”

“No — no, I haven’t.”

Bilbo sent a brief smile Thorin’s way, and then turned in his seat to peer about the room. “But you all use the taste of stone and minerals for such things! You’re right, that is very dwarven…”

The surrounding dining space was beautiful, with accents of deep blue in the same tile that lined their little nook, alongside long stretches of velvet drapery in the same color. As he looked around, Bilbo noticed that the little parties of dwarrow at the other tables were still glancing at him and in fact — now that he and Thorin were installed upon their dais — even watching his movements quite blatantly. But in the end, Bilbo could not find what he was searching for, anywhere: the slate board that would list the available dishes.

Anxious to get at least the next step of ordering correct, after the difficulty with the wine, he turned back to Thorin. “Will Leif come back with a list of specials?”

“You can request a souvenir menu at the end of the meal; they’d certainly make one for you.”

“No, but–” Bilbo huffed, trying to manage his burgeoning frustration. He wondered if he could use his napkin to pat his forehead dry, or if that would be gauche. “What is there to eat? What should I order?”

Thorin’s mouth opened in realization.

“You don’t order anything; it’s a set menu,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry — I didn’t explain this well, I was so eager to treat you to the meal. This is a test kitchen: a workshop where the food is produced by a Master of Cookery, one who is pursuing innovation in cooking as their lifeswork. The food they create is presented here as craft, rather than an extension of pure hospitality, or even primarily as sustenance.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows, attention drawn back fully from his examination of the room. If you took away hospitality and sustenance from the act of eating together, what was left?

Still, he smiled. “Food as craft! My! Now I’m not sure at all what to expect.”

“It is not so different from any other mastery, I can assure you. Many craftsdwarrow have rooms like this, in their workshops, to showcase their wares for buyers.”

Bilbo recalled the blue velvet cloth upon which Thorin presented Bilbo’s treasures, and so he nodded.

“The meal will be coursed out, in individual dishes, and–”

Here Thorin stopped talking abruptly; Bilbo turned and spotted Leif approaching with the drinks order. Both beverages were in glasses, and both were surprising: Thorin’s because Bilbo expected beer to be served in a tankard, not in such a tall and gracefully turned glass as this, and Bilbo’s because he had never seen a stemmed wine glass with such a wide bloom of a bowl!

“Thank you, Leif,” Bilbo was sure to say, and Thorin nodded his thanks for good measure.

“Of course, your Majesties,” Leif said. “I’ll keep an eye on you, and once your drinks are finished, we’ll start serving the first course.”

Once Leif was away, Thorin leaned forward a bit and murmured, “I cut myself off because he would never have come over if I was still talking, and I prefer the stout cold as it gets. But I was trying to say that the dinner will be coursed out in a sequence, and each dish will be a novel creation crafted by Torsk and cooked by him and his apprentices — of which I would guess Leif is a relative newcomer. The untried apprentices tend to the tables and only practice when the kitchen is not actively serving; the more experienced apprentices craft the meal alongside the Master Cook when there are patrons in attendance.”

“Seems very official!”

“It is,” Thorin replied. “As you no doubt learned today in the Guilds Hall, dwarven mastery is very official business. In fact, I would guess no apprentice will touch our meal at all. It will come from the hand of Torsk himself.”

“It’s funny to hear you talk so solemnly of ‘Torsk,’” Bilbo mused, picking up his wine glass. “As if he were the King, and you were but a humble supplicant!”

Thorin laughed. “Well, he has garnered a reputation, that’s cl–”

But here Thorin cut himself off again, for Bilbo had just spat his mouthful of wine, violently, right back into the glass.

For a moment, they both sat there in silence. Bilbo could not have said what Thorin was feeling, to make him so quiet, but Bilbo knew his speechlessness was born of an acute mortification. But the taste of the wine had been vile — really, truly vile! — and he had only wanted to get it out of his mouth as quickly as possible.

“I’m so sorry!” he blurted at last. “I have no idea what came over me! By my soles! I am sorry! Did any of it get on you?”

“…No,” Thorin said. “But I take it the wine did not agree with you.”

“No! It did not! Maybe it’s gone off–”

Bilbo tried another mouthful — reluctantly, for the prospect of the wine had not been improved by how he’d just spat a great mouthful of it back into the glass. Once again, the taste of it turned his stomach, and so the second mouthful met the same fate as the first (though he was able to spit it out much more discreetly, this time).

Bilbo stared down at the glass. The wine tasted bad, but it didn’t taste bad. That was to say, Bilbo didn’t think it had gone rancid. He could even tell it matched up rather closely to the order he had put in with Leif: a red wine both rich and bright, not too exuberant, not too shallow.

But drinking it felt as it might to quaff mud from a cup. You might say afterwards: yes, that’s exactly what I’d expect mud to taste like, and I don’t like it one bit!

“Really, I am terribly sorry,” said Bilbo. Again, he felt disturbed and embarrassed. “I don’t– I’m sure it’s a very good year–”

“Don’t apologize,” Thorin said. “In truth, it doesn’t surprise me. You haven’t had a glass of–”

“Your Majesty, I’m so sorry!”

Bilbo startled — catching his knee rather badly on the underside of the table — when Leif rushed up alongside the dais, his bearded face a rictus of anxiety.

“The wine — it wasn’t right, I can see that,” Leif effused. “I apologize. Was it too gregarious?”

The question was asked with so much earnestness and such a clear unfamiliarity with what gregarious might mean in this situation that Bilbo felt an impulse to laugh bubbling in his chest like his gorge rising. He only barely stayed silent, sitting there rubbing his sore knee, and so it was up to Thorin to step in.

“No need for worry,” said the King. “No one’s to blame. But if you would take away the glass, and bring a cider instead — leaning towards lead rather than chalk — we’d be thankful.”

Leif left again, shoulders hunched so high it reminded Bilbo of Yinka’s repeated injunctions: you are so tense; you will surely give yourself a headache! I wish you would not worry so! They would have to say something kind the next time that Leif returned, to smooth the whole matter over.

“You’ve said that even the smell of wine puts you off, now,” he heard Thorin say, and so Bilbo swung his head around to look at him in confusion. “Since our escape in the barrels, you haven’t had any taste for it.”

“What!” cried Bilbo. “Barrels! What barrels?”

This of course led into an explanation of the Company’s escape from the Elfking’s halls via a squadron of miscellaneous barrels. Bilbo’s barrel had stunk of old wine, and — the journey down the river being neither smooth nor pleasant — it had soured him on the taste, maybe for good. Thorin shared that the same thing had happened to Fili, who because of his own barrel could no longer stand the taste or smell of fresh apples… though even now he’d still trip over himself to eat up Bilbo’s apple cobbler and pie, same as the rest of the Company.

Bilbo’s visible surprise made Thorin ask: “You had not heard any of this? I’d thought the Company was telling you about our quest for the Mountain?”

“Well, they were, at first. But then I asked them to stop.”

In the middle of Thorin’s retelling of the great escape, Leif returned with Bilbo’s new glass of cider (which was very good, intensely sweet, and a great relief to have at hand). The story of the Company and the barrels and the elves appeared so well known under the Mountain, at this point, that Thorin needed only mention wine barrels in the Old Forest River to have Leif sagging in relief, even before Bilbo reiterated that the wine was not the apprentice’s fault. Leif even stayed until the tale was done, and laughed when Thorin finished by relaying what Bilbo had said, when the King had complained after the rough river ride:

“He stood there soaking wet and demanded of me: ‘Well, are you alive or are you dead?’” Thorin recounted to Leif with a smile. “And you know he really was cross as a bowline knot! He said, ‘Are you still in prison, or are you free? If you want food, and if you want to go on with this silly adventure — it’s yours, after all, and not mine — you had better slap your arms and rub your legs and try and help me get the others out while there is a chance!’”

This did sound like the kind of thing Bilbo knew he was like to say when pushed clear over the edge of his patience, and so he laughed right alongside Leif. But though the story was entertaining, it did give Bilbo pause.

Thorin had said that the barrel plot was Bilbo’s own idea, to spring the dwarrow free from jail. This was very shocking, for it was well understood throughout the Shire that it was a rare and odd hobbit who mixed well with water. Rivers and lakes and streams and gullies were all known to be dangerous; even the Bywater Pool had the good sense to be no more than a yard and a half deep, otherwise Hobbiton surely would not have sprung up near its banks. Tweens in Buckland and the South Farthing Marshes might boat or swim, but this was a caprice best grown out of as soon as possible.

And so, for Bilbo to have orchestrated such a scheme, using such unreliable means of escape as old barrels, in such an unknown and swift-moving river as the one that ran through Mirkwood — well, it was a huge risk. An unimaginable one, really. He must have been beyond desperate. And yet, Thorin told the story in such a charming manner, as if the whole thing had always been bound to be harmless… It was difficult to know how to react. Listening to the tale made Bilbo’s face into a mask, separated from his control and ill-connected to his true feelings.

From there, Leif went away, the ale and cider were consumed, and the story of the barrels expanded into something longer and larger, as it grew to encompass the Company’s trek through Mirkwood and imprisonment in the stronghold of the woodland elves.

(Thorin interrupted his own storytelling to comment, “I can’t help but think you will accuse us of being bad historians; we are giving you the story all out of order.”

“I don’t mind,” said Bilbo. “Nothing else about my life right now is entirely straightforward! I don’t see why this should be any different.”)

The tale of Mirkwood continued, but after Thorin and Bilbo’s drinks were finished, the sequence of the dinner began. The meal wound up being deeply absorbing of Bilbo’s attention, and so eventually, he fell silent and hardly noticed that all talk between himself and Thorin had ceased.

For it was true that this mode of dwarven dining was entirely different than anything Bilbo had ever before encountered!

The food was marvelous; much of it good, yes, but every dish assuredly a marvel. The meal was indeed an exploration of culinary preservation, just as Leif had promised — but the manner of its presentation and consumption was completely novel. The portions, for one, were extremely small, and arrayed very sculpturally upon the plate, so that everything brought to the table was a visual work of art rather than simply a hunk of roast or a scoop of mash. And when Leif and a second apprentice brought each ‘course’ to the table, they did so in perfect and choreographed unison — setting both dishes before Bilbo and Thorin in utter silence — before this second, more experienced apprentice explained the composition and intent of each:

There was, to start, a plate presenting just three strips of fruit leather, preserving raspberry, apple, and something called “bilberry,” a mountain fruit which Bilbo had never before encountered. There was a course comprised of several variations on pumpkin: salt-preserved bites of pumpkin, smoked pumpkin seared like steak, gelatinized pumpkin in a tiny bone marrow aspic. Then there was a cup of fish broth, strained pure and almost perfectly clear, despite its intense flavor. This was followed by a salver bearing cod which had been cured in lye, and next in line was a little dish of grainy, flavored ice, tasting so much of lemon and herbs that it seemed a mouthful of sunshine. Then there was candied beef served on toast points with horseradish paste and jams of bacon and onion.

The presentation of each item was captivating, and Bilbo never could predict exactly what would come next. And the food itself was entirely curious! It was not very filling, and the flavors were such that they had clearly been chosen to generate complexity and interest — not necessarily to taste good. The highest honor one could offer a hobbitish dish was to call it ‘delicious,’ ‘scrumptious,’ ‘tasty,’ and especially to ask the host for the recipe. Bilbo did not precisely want to ask Torsk for any of these recipes, as he could not imagine serving a single one for a supper or teatime. But he was still very much enjoying the composition of the dishes, and having a wonderful time consuming them with Thorin.

And so the dwarven ethic of it all became clearer and clearer to Bilbo over the course of the meal. The whole affair truly was a work of craft, and utilitarian after its own fashion: fulfilling a need for novelty and intrigue — just as the Infirmary food, and the great stock pots of curry at the stand near the Custom’s House, and Bombur’s straightforward fare on the road had each fulfilled the need for fueling the body, day to day. This food fulfilled the need for art. It was quite unhobbitish. It was deeply thrilling.

Bilbo and Thorin were picking over the final course — a large sampling board placed on the table between them to share, bearing cheeses, cured meats, summer fruits, and several different types of crackers — when whispers started to wrack the room. At first, Bilbo froze, terrified to realize he had forgotten about the surrounding crowd entirely, and certain that he was doing something to draw everyone’s attention. But then he felt silly to realize that no one was looking his direction at all. Instead, they were all facing the very back of the room, the direction opposing the entryway.

This was when Torsk strode out.

Even without the loud, fricative whispers that sporadically contained his name — Torsk — it would have been clear from the fellow’s bearing that he was the Master Cook of this establishment. He was so self-assured it was nearly gravitational, in the same manner Bilbo recognized in Thorin as King Under the Mountain. There was, in fairness, some visual similarity, too; for Torsk had black hair (though his was tightly curled and mostly hidden under a tall, pleated white hat to match his crisp white tunic) and intensely wide, blue eyes set in a pale face. He was shorter and wider at the belly than Thorin, and his braided beard was covered by a sheer strip of tulle passing under and across his chin, to keep every strand of hair in place.

“Your Majesties.” Once he had reached their nook, Torsk greeted them with a deep bow. “I thank you for attending my table.”

Thorin gave a shallow nod of the head. “Of course, Master Torsk.”

Torsk straightened and gripped the belt of his white apron in one hand. He set his piercing gaze upon Bilbo. “I request your thoughts on the meal.”

And he waited. He stood completely still. The room and all its patrons were silent.

He kept looking directly at Bilbo.

— who swallowed roughly, for he realized he still had a mass of half-chewed cheese in his mouth.

“Well! It was such an experience!” Bilbo rushed to say. His tongue — still gritty from the mostly-swallowed food — tripped over itself to try and say something cogent about the meal, and his face heated when he realized everyone in the room would hear — was hearing — with crystal clarity whatever he said. “So unique. Really– wonderful. Delicious! And fascinating. Thank you for hosting us.”

Torsk continued to look on expectantly, but Bilbo couldn’t imagine what else might be offered. At any hobbitish dinner party, when you complimented the food, your host would downplay their accomplishment, of course… but they were always sure to say something that would cue you on precisely what they really wanted you to praise:

Oh, thank you, but I do think the roast could have used a bit of a kick…

No, no, not at all! It was perfectly spiced!

That’s so kind of you. Here I was wondering if the hominy was too dull a contribution to the table, but I’m hearing that maybe it was just the thing…?

Well, frankly, I would think your hominy a delight even if it were the only thing on the table!

Oh, hush, you always were such a sweet talker!

And yet, here and now, Torsk was saying nothing. He was giving Bilbo nothing to work with.

It was miserable, for Bilbo, to know — for the thousandth time, for the ten thousandth time! — exactly how this would have played out in the Shire. But he had been out of practice in social niceties even back then, which left him with little faith now in his ability to improvise upon those scripts here in Erebor.

Bilbo stared into his own mind as if staring down a deep well, hoping to draw up a response, but he felt as empty and silent as he had in the Guilds Hall. He could tell that, unlike in the Hall, this was not a debate in which others would jump in to share their thoughts, and Torsk was their host, and he had just done Bilbo a great service, and something — anything — must be said.

And so: “Why, that soup!”

He could hear his voice had gone more wavery, more uncertain. He tried to make up for it by simply speaking louder, but the sound of it echoed oddly around the space, in what seemed to Bilbo an inescapably ugly fashion: “How unique! How wonderful.” But he had already said ‘unique’ and ‘wonderful.’ “Yes. The whole meal. What a treat. Exquisite.”

“What of the crackers?” Torsk prodded. When Bilbo did not immediately respond, he continued urgently, “They were a play on hardtack. Waybread. We end the meal with food for the road.”

“Oh, is that right?” Bilbo latched onto this new heading, which provided excellent direction for his compliments. “How clever! Yes, of course, I see that now. I was tricked because it was so tasty, you see. Much tastier than your bog-standard hardtack, by far!”

But Torsk only said, with continued urgency, “You have your own recipe for hardtack.”

“Oh, do I?”

Bilbo was increasingly aware of how much it sounded as if he were playing dumb, which had been his old standby in the Shire when he had been trying to escape the notice of his neighbors. Oh, was there a party last week? Oh, had you really asked me to attend? Oh, it seems I clear forgot. Oh, what a shame. Oh, well. Back then, it had all been a ploy, but in the here and now, Bilbo actually was confused, really was lost. It was the wrong script. The way his falsity in the Shire and his earnestness in Erebor sounded exactly the same left his chest feeling cold in contrast to his flaming cheeks.

“I’ll have to go look for that, then,” Bilbo said. “Have to– um. Go look in my recipes. For it. Thank you for the reminder.”

It was clear Torsk wanted even more, and he waited for it. But nothing came. Bilbo looked over at Thorin — who had been no help at all this whole conversation — and widened his eyes at the King. Do something.

Thorin, blessedly, obliged. “Thank you, indeed, Torsk,” he said gravely. “This was one of the soundest coursed meals I’ve ever had. A pleasure.”

Thorin had a gift for speaking with finality, a skill Bilbo did not possess (or no longer possessed, he supposed he should say). It signaled to whoever was waiting for more that instead they should make themselves scarce. Torsk breathed out slowly, like a bull sizing up a foe, and bowed, before turning about and marching back to the kitchen.

There was a moment of absolute silence… before the crush of whispers was back, as all the other patrons hunched in close over their tables to discuss the spectacle. Bilbo stared after Torsk in horror, feeling as frozen in time and place as all the preserved food they had just eaten, sitting solid in Bilbo’s stomach, unable to change, unable to–

“Oh, that was not done well,” Bilbo scrunched his mouth about, trying to banish the scalded feeling in his cheeks. His knee was still throbbing from its earlier tussle with the table. “That was not done well at all.”

“You said nothing amiss,” Thorin assured him immediately.

“Maybe not! But there was obviously something I should have said and didn’t.” Bilbo turned away from the room at large and looked back at Thorin, who was wiping his mouth with his napkin. It was suddenly apparent to Bilbo that the King was trying to cover up an inability to keep a straight face. “And look at you, having a laugh! Clearly, I went wrong somewhere in there!”

“Nothing went wrong. It’s just funny.”

Funny did mean wrong, more often than not, but — “Well, explain it to me, then!”

Thorin sighed, bringing his napkin back down to his lap. He looked a mite more serious, but his eyes still danced. “He came over here, all heated up for the hammer, looking for critique, and you didn’t give him any.”

Bilbo gasped. “I should think not! He was serving us food! What kind of guest would I be, to complain over the food I’m given?”

It was beyond rude to find fault with a dish and say so to anyone’s face, let alone the cook’s! You could judge privately all you wanted — and Bilbo certainly did — but no word of that must ever be said aloud!

The King frowned over at Bilbo, briefly.

“Critique,” Thorin repeated. “Not criticism, not insult. Critique. He was — looking for advice about cookery. It's a bit ostentatious, to ask out here in front of everyone, but he was hoping you might share what you thought successful about the meal, what could have been strengthened, what you would have done differently. He was hoping, yes, to be praised, but more than that, he hoped to learn from you.”

“From me?”

“Aye, your cooking is renowned here.” Thorin’s frown only intensified. “I’ve said so before.”

“I’m sure you like it,” Bilbo said with great exasperation. “You have to like it! You’re married to me. Half of all hobbit weddings just about put that in the vows: you must praise my cooking above all others’, come whate’er temptation be placed afore you at dinner party, free fair, or birthday bash, or so help me, Lady Green! Now, my cooking’s fine, but it is nothing special.”

“No, it’s very good,” said Thorin firmly. “And it’s exciting to dwarrow. You do not approach the preparation of food as a dwarf does, and so your cooking provides such insight as to be valuable even aside from its good taste. Your critique is highly coveted, amongst our Master Cooks.”

“…So it was as if I was withholding it, for no reason,” Bilbo realized aloud.

Thorin tilted his head a bit at the neck: a halfway shrug.

“What a snob I’ve made myself look!” cried Bilbo. “And you, saying nothing! Why didn’t you tell me what he wanted?”

Thorin peered at him. “Bilbo, you hate being corrected in front of other people.”

“Well–” Bilbo sputtered. “Yes, all right, but! Now he’s going to think he did a poor job with the meal!”

“It’s not worth the worry,” Thorin said, turning back to the sampling board to claim a disk of sliced summer sausage. “I don’t think anything would make Torsk doubt himself, proud as he is. And we will come back another time, so you can provide critique then.”

“What! We certainly can’t come back now!”

“Oh, we absolutely have to.” Thorin smiled. “Whatever he makes for you next time will be twice as exquisite, out of sheer spite. I can’t wait.”

Thorin ate the slice of sausage in one bite, and Bilbo himself stared back down at the sampling board. Glumly, he cut off a crumbly piece of a lovely crystalized, cheddar-like cheese.

That he should appear so arrogant as to withhold advice, guidance, support…! As Consort! It was a bad business, indeed!

He glanced about at the other patrons, noting some smirks and widened eyes — as if they were pleased Bilbo had put Torsk in his place! Why, one dwarrowdam was looking down at the cured ox tongue on her cheese board through a little jeweler’s lens, frowning at it! Suspicious of it!

“What would you have told him, if I had said anything?” Thorin asked, interrupting Bilbo’s anxious thoughts.

Bilbo turned back to his husband, who was leaning over the table and looking at Bilbo very seriously.

Thorin pressed: “What critique would you have offered?”

“…Nothing.” Bilbo said, with honesty. “It was all so wonderful and new, I wouldn’t have thought to question anything. I couldn’t fault a thing.”

Thorin smiled again, though his eyebrows were still furrowed. “Then all’s well. Nothing would have changed, so there’s naught to fault in your actions, either.”

But Bilbo knew it was not so simple.

He thought of Torsk storming off, of the shrewd, assessing glances he had spotted just now amongst the other diners. None of them understood that Bilbo’s weak praise for Torsk was born of his own insecurity, and was nothing to do with Torsk’s performance — nor could they tell what Bilbo was perseverating over right this moment. Being misinterpreted had never mattered much to Bilbo in the Shire. People there had learned not to care what he thought: of their cooking, their clothing, their merry-making, their living — any of it! And so he’d felt lucky to have been an afterthought to them, if thought of at all, and he had told himself he didn’t mind it one bit, since none of it had seemed likely to change. He could content himself with his own good opinion and be satisfied. But here in Erebor, the smallest matter had stakes beyond Bilbo’s wildest imaginings, beyond the very limits of his conception. And that didn’t seem liable to change, either.

The cheese board swam before Bilbo’s eyes. It felt like the persistent whispers were flooding the room with rushing water, rising and rising until all the air was squeezed clear out.

In the end, Bilbo found he could do nothing but eat up the rest of the hardtack crackers. He shoved them into his mouth one by one. After all, it was true that they were exquisite, and it would be a shame to waste them, even with his belly rebelling and his head spinning and his heart dropping all the way down to the floor.

--

The next day, Bilbo did not feel better.

In fact, as he and Thorin stood in the middle of their once-shared bedroom, poring over options for Bilbo’s daily attire, he felt completely miserable, and sour as an upset stomach.

Bilbo had arisen and joined Thorin in the breakfast room, where they had sat and picked over first breakfast with stilted conversation. Then they had gone back to the bedroom, where Thorin had initially offered him a suit in dark blue herringbone, which he suggested Bilbo pair with either a red neckerchief or a yellow one — both of which Thorin held up next to the lapels like a shopkeeper working on commission. When Bilbo waved his hand, Thorin next found a loosely-cut jacket in black velveteen, which might go with a proffered shirt of muslin, or one in cambric, depending on Bilbo’s preference. Then there was a dramatic purple outfit, one that might be worn with or without the matching cape. Then a blue waistcoat that could go with trousers in two other shades of blue. Then something embroidered all over in silver. Then something colored like rust. Then something beige. And on. And on.

“Bilbo,” Thorin said, once Bilbo had pooh-poohed all nine options he had been offered thus far. His voice was strained. “Are you feeling well? Balin has me busy all day, but there’s no need for you to dress or go out.”

“Am I feeling well!” Bilbo cried.  “And just what do you mean by that?”

“You seem agitated, and something is clearly bothering you. You’re not still worried about yest–?”

“I’m feeling perfectly fine, thank you! Thank you! I am sorry I’m not choosing clothing speedily enough for you to get on with your day!”

A muscle jumped in Thorin’s jaw, visible even through his beard. “It would help if you told me what you were looking for.”

“Oh, is that why you’ve been bringing out the silliest outfits imaginable?” Bilbo laughed, all scorn. “Because I’m not giving you enough guidance regarding what a sensible hobbit might wear?”

Thorin seethed. “These are your clothes! If they are ridiculous, it’s because–”

But then he stopped himself. He blinked as if he had walked out of a dark tunnel into sudden sunlight.

He asked Bilbo, “Why are we fighting?”

Why are we fighting? Bilbo almost shouted. Why are we fighting! Because! Because it’s what we do! It’s what we’ve always done!

But hearing such a sentiment echo through his head, Bilbo stopped himself, too. That thought was unkind, and what’s more, it was untrue. There was a great deal of evidence to show that Thorin had reconsidered any contempt he might have held for Bilbo’s character, back on the quest. Thorin had proven it, again and again and again; why couldn’t Bilbo remember this change of heart, nor believe it?

Then his own heart sank. Thorin may indeed have changed, but Bilbo — Bilbo had not. He had been trying now for months to fit himself into Erebor, and here he was: struggling, with no end in sight.

“Quite right,” was what he said aloud, stiffly. He twitched his fists back and forth at his sides and tried to stifle his sudden feeling of kinship with children in the midst of a tantrum. “I don’t know what’s come over me. Apologies. I’ll wear that.”

He poked a finger out at random; it happened to point toward an emerald green ensemble, draped across the bench at the foot of the bed. Thorin had presented this option with two little, glittering pins: one in enamel, representing a water lily blooming askant a lily pad, and the other made of tiny, splintering gems that together formed the shape of a peacock. Bilbo had worn both, Thorin claimed, to great effect with this very outfit.

Bilbo had already realized, by now, that Thorin was attempting to manufacture some degree of choice for Bilbo, when he presented these little decisions alongside the clothing he picked out. It allowed Bilbo to assert control when he otherwise may have felt he had none, and Bilbo had appreciated this conscientiousness up until today, when suddenly it chafed against him like a shirt made of burlap.

In just the same way, the emerald suit would have been a revelation on any other occasion. It was truly beautiful. But now it looked entirely unremarkable, next to eight other options that were just as lovely and elaborate, and as Bilbo gazed at it, he realized that he had actually been craving work in his garden today, though he couldn’t have said so before he had happened to pick a suit that was totally inappropriate for that purpose.

And anyway, now he felt too crabbed and discomposed to tend to his plants! It was almost as if choosing the emerald outfit had spoiled the suit and the prospect of gardening, both, before Bilbo could realize he was dooming either.

“Oh, never mind,” he said to Thorin at last. “Maybe you’re right. There’s no need for me to get dressed today, since apparently, I’m only going to be a complete beast to anyone unlucky enough to come across me.”

Thorin was staring at him. Bilbo wanted to gripe, Oh, I’m sorry, Mister Thorin Oakenshield! Sir! Your Majesty! And here I was, thinking you to be a long-time expert on the having of foul moods! Can’t take what you dish out?

But he was trying to calm down, Bilbo reminded himself, and acknowledge that Thorin had grown a great deal, as a person. Harping on about anyone’s ill mood — especially his own — would be entirely counterproductive.

“Again, my apologies,” Bilbo said, without much sincerity (or dignity, if he was being honest with himself). He turned about and looked resolutely down, plucking at one sleeve of the emerald jacket. “Now if you would leave me be, I would appreciate it very much. I’m just going to go and lie back down.”

…But after Thorin left, Bilbo did not go and lie back down. It was past time, after all, that he dealt with his own mess.

He picked up all the outfits: the jackets, the trousers, the shirts, the waistcoats, the neckerchiefs, the silly cape. He marched them into the closet: back and forth, back and forth. He started putting things away — shoving them into place, really, in whatever spot looked likeliest.

But Bilbo realized — gradually, as he heaved and pushed great blocks of hung-up garments this way and that upon their racks — that none of it looked right anymore. The order was off, now: the rust-colored jacket did not look as if it should go next to the one in burnt orange, though they were both so similar in color. He couldn’t spot an area just for capes, and so he had no idea where to put this one; when he tried to hang it amongst his purple jackets, it looked wrong next to the magenta, but it was too dark to be placed down next to the lavenders and lilacs, which were closer in hue. And he ended up simply plunging the two different pairs of blue trousers willy-nilly onto the blue-toned rack, where they stood out like sore thumbs.

He rubbed at his forehead, sorely agitated that he could not replicate the perfect rainbow he had encountered that first morning upon waking in the residence.

Oh, why had he asked Thorin to do this for him, and why hadn’t Bilbo taken it back upon himself earlier? He’d been relying too deeply on Thorin, that much was obvious now. He was a grown hobbit! He could choose his own clothing! He was not a child that needed his braces laid out in the morning, lest he find his trousers down around his ankles whilst he walked to the schoolroom — or worse, a little lad who must be allowed the illusion of choice in his wardrobe! Bilbo could just hear his mother’s voice: now, you may wear your blue neckerchief or your green neckerchief today, but you can’t wear both!

It was embarrassing, to nominally head up a monarchy — for Lady’s sake! — and nevertheless need someone else to manage his closet. Where was the dignity? Where was the self-respect? Where were those little jeweled pins that Thorin had shown him, to go with the green outfit?

He found them where they had slid between the wood of the footboard and the cushion of the bench which Thorin had used to display a few of this morning’s many options. Unwilling to chance another encounter with his husband at the moment, Bilbo threw open the doors to his wardrobe to thrust the pins inside, where he might store them until he could secret them back to Thorin’s workshop. Bilbo elbowed his array of dressing gowns aside and looked down at the velvet-covered surface where he’d hoped to drop the jewelry. He only spied instead a dusty stack of folded fabric.

But of course! It was the original outfit he hadn’t wanted to deal with, back when he had first returned to the royal apartments and found the set still splattered with blood and dust.

Bilbo shook each item out, one by one. The trousers were a lovely corduroy, and could surely be salvaged if the dirt were beat out of them and then they were sent to the laundry. The underwear could be used for fire-starting — unwashed for months and months, ugh! The shirt was probably a lost cause, too. The blood would have set in so deeply by now that, even with soaking and soap, the fabric would be riddled with that particular sort of bloodstain that was impossible to remove: blotchy, stubborn, wine-red rings, washed white at the center but otherwise permanent.

Which left the jacket.

Bilbo looked it over with the shrewd eye of a fellow well-used to ferreting out clothes to be regifted as mathoms or torn up for rags. There were stains there too, as on the shirt. But the color of the jacket was, itself, blood-like enough to perhaps mask– ah, no, not quite; the brown discolored the gold of the brocade pattern too much. The pattern really was extraordinary. Bilbo would hate to see it consigned to the scrap heap! He wondered, as he checked the pockets just in case, if there was enough unstained fabric left to make a waistcoat– or, he supposed, there was always room to include it in another patchwork robe–

He gasped.

For this time, there was actually was something tethered to those curious chains! And it was a lovely something, Bilbo saw, when he extricated the whole tangled prize from within the pocket.

It was a ring. A simple, golden ring.

Like stepping into a strong beam of noontime sunlight, Bilbo was suddenly awash in an immense feeling of warmth, of peace. What a relief it was, to finally find the treasure he’d been searching for, winding his fingers every day around those loose chains in each of his jackets! And how silly he’d been, not to look here first — for obviously this was where the ring would be, in the last jacket he had worn before the Forgetting. Really, he should have looked for it earlier. The ring was such a lovely sight, after all, and clearly precious to him; why, it was a great pleasure to see it again! It filled him with such a swelling feeling of joy, such a thawing happiness to be reacquainted —

…That thought gave Bilbo pause. For of course, the only other time he felt that way, these days — that elated, melting, sugary sensation that lit within his chest and warmed him through every limb and sinew — was when he looked upon Thorin. Bilbo had long accepted that feeling as evidence of his Forgotten love for Thorin, which Bilbo’s body remembered for him.

But this was a piece of jewelry, not a person. And Bilbo had never owned a ring before. Rings didn’t mean much in the Shire, though he knew that dwarrow used them as seals for wax and menfolk used them to mark marriages. So this ring might be a novelty, to him, but it was awfully simple, with nothing much to it…

...though it was nice enough to look at. Very nice, in fact! Its shape was perfectly round, its surface perfectly smooth. Even having sat untended in the dark for months and months, it gleamed; the gold itself seemed to sing with purity–

Bilbo wagged his head like there was water stuck in his ears. He realized then that he had been starting to unclip the ring from its chains without really deciding to do so.

He blinked down at it. The ring was resting, now, in the palm of his right hand as he held the mass of his jacket, awkwardly bunched-up, against his side with his left elbow. The yellow and orange light from his sun-shaped skylight danced across the band, like a homefire beginning to rise in a hearth.

Slowly, then, a feeling of unease began to kindle in him too, rising just like that illusion of flame.

There were still three chains attached to the ring by their little crayfish-claw clasps. Each and every righthand pocket of Bilbo’s jackets contained four such chains.

Now, clipping one single chain to a ring might suggest only a desire to keep track of a trinket. Attaching a pair of chains could be dismissed as a security measure.

But to bind four chains onto a ring — four! Well, it smacked of fear. A rank, fretful desperation to keep the ring safe, secure. That Forgotten desperation, that degree of love for an object, made Bilbo’s skin crawl.

It revolted him.

He stuffed the ring back into the jacket pocket; he thrust the jacket back into the wardrobe. He slammed the doors shut. He staggered back until he was free at the center of the room.

But he wasn’t free. The horrid feeling remained.

It grew, and grew, until once more he felt overcome by those same sensations with which he’d been flooded upon returning to his royal bedchamber: the shortness of breath; the overwhelming, sparkling flashes of light before his eyes; the ringing in his ears.

That feeling of ambush. Of ensnarement.

He gasped for air.

Bilbo couldn’t stay here. He had to get out.