Chapter Text
No matter how desperately Bilbo Baggins tried to return to his simple, comfortable life in the shire, he simply couldn’t. The hole left in his days by his friends, his found family, his real home was palpable. The empty space lingered in the edges of his vision and in every corner of his now empty-feeling hobbit hole.
Glancing across the table at meals or to his side during walks had suddenly become a painful ritual. There was nowhere he could turn to escape the memories boiling at the edges of his thoughts, threatening to break through and never allow him peace again. The taste of ale became a sobering one, and the smell of woodsmoke brought on waves of all-encompassing fear. Worst of all was the oak tree rapidly sprouting on the hill just above Bag End. Bilbo could barely glance at it most days and watering it in the heat took a Sisyphean effort of willpower. Even the sight and smell of oak wood in his home and around Hobbiton triggered an onslaught of memories that tore at Bilbo’s bruised heart like the claws of a Warg.
Dark hair, soaked in sweat and melted snow, matted with blood, splayed across icy rocks.
The rattle of the dwarf king’s breath as he forced himself to speak, wasting his final words on Bilbo of all people, begging his forgiveness.
Blue-grey eyes, once so courageous and proud, losing their focus and slipping from Bilbo’s horrified face to stare endlessly into the dawning sky.
Blood, so much blood, too much blood, staining the snow and the hobbit’s hands deep crimson, running in little rivers down the king’s handsome face.
The age on Thorin, wonderful, brave, strong, pigheaded Thorin’s face finally starting to show, as his forefathers welcomed him home and he passed beyond all pain and left a poor, emptied out, lost hobbit crouching in the snow of Erebor.
Bilbo had told Gandalf that he had found his courage in the goblin mines, which wasn’t entirely true. Rather, Bilbo’s courage had found him the moment that he had looked into Thorin’s eyes and seen something other than distrust and annoyance. And when Thorin had pulled him into his arms and admitted he had been wrong in a voice that was sickeningly warm, a voice that spoke of a bond waiting to bloom, well, that had really been the final straw.
Before then, Bilbo had been able to pass off the twist of his stomach whenever the light caught in the dwarf king’s eyes and set them aglow as simple awe of Thorin’s power and leadership. He had been able to convince himself that the way his heart jumped into his throat whenever Thorin was particularly stubborn or proud, arguing with the company or somehow managing to find the gall to talk back to Lord Elrond of all people as annoyance or worry. But when Thorin leaned his head into Bilbo’s shoulder and the hobbit felt his smile against the side of his neck, lips so close to where he ached for them to be and beard softly scratching his jaw, there was simply no way to deny it anymore. Bilbo had fallen head over heels for the most stubborn, proud, brash dwarf in all of Middle Earth.
The courage Bilbo had claimed to find in the goblin mines had only blossomed and grown under Thorin’s warm gaze catching his and slight smiles across the campfire at night, as though they were sharing a joke, just the two of them, just Thorin and Bilbo, Bilbo and Thorin. With Thorin at his side Bilbo felt six foot tall, powerful as a Valar and strong as an Ent. The polite, respectable gentle hobbit was lost, left behind in Gollum’s tunnels with his waistcoat buttons. The hobbit Bilbo had grown into, the one he had discovered he liked being, the one has wanted to be for his whole life, had been torn away in the icy air of that final blood-soaked dawn.
At first the rage had consumed the empty shell Bilbo had become, the refusal to accept what had happened. He had screamed, tried to cling to Thorin as he was carried away, collapsed boneless in the snow and wailed until his breath was a barely-there rasp, coughed up the contents of his stomach over and over until there was nothing left but bile and the snow stank to high heaven and Gandalf had to heave him from a greenish brown pool of his own vomit. Then the numbness had set in and never totally left. Every step, every heartbeat had dragged, every second there was a Thorin-shaped hole at his side. Finding out about Kili and Fili had done nothing to bring Bilbo back to earth, only making him quieter and his stomach even weaker. Every day was an endless silent scream, every night was a hazy maze of confusing visons that may or may not have been real memories, and every morning Bilbo woke short on breath, bile rising in his throat.
The journey back may have taken months, it may have taken a day. Time blurred in Bilbo’s mind like a smudged painting, colours turning slightly grey. Since returning to the Shire, Bilbo’s state had not improved. He missed the rest of the company like a severed limb, but being in their presence was too jarring. Their voices and mannerisms too similar to his, their grief too different from his own to know how to offer what comfort he could. Folk of the Shire had been briefly shocked and stunned by Bilbo’s sudden, dramatic return, but gossip will do as gossip does and fade into something less sensational and more sour. Children stared when Bilbo dared to leave his home and adults started whispering to each other in his wake. Bilbo’s shortened temper and his general inability to keep food down nowadays certainly didn’t help the swirling rumours of shady dealings and kidnappings that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Really, it felt like Bilbo’s life had ended with Thorin’s. Like he was still lying curled in on himself in the snow and blood and vomit, refusing to move. Bilbo drifted through his days in a numbed haze, sleeping fitfully and sitting staring at the floor late into the wee morning hours.
It had been in the midst of these evening floor-staring sessions when a far-too-familiar knock sounded on Bilbo’s now faded green front door. Muscle memory kicked in, Bilbo’s mind still miles away in the tunnels and chasms of a long-left behind kingdom. Without even realising it his feet were moving, Bilbo got up from where he had sunk a concerning depth into his armchair and walked to the door. He felt as though his body was not his own, like he was floating and there was a cord attached to his chest, forcibly dragging him forward. As if in a dream, Bilbo watched his hand raise mechanically to the central knob, grasp, and turn. The door creaked open painfully, hinges groaning from lack of use.
The view that greeted Bilbo’s blurred, confused eyes was one that brought on an almost dangerously strong spell of déjà vu. A firm jaw, sharp nose, long hair flowing back from his proud forehead, Bilbo could almost see the phantom crown on his brow. So similar, yet so different from that fateful night. This time Thorin looked more tired, more worn down, more desperate, leaning on the doorframe in a way that would have concerned Bilbo, had he been in any lucid state of mind.
Thorin’s mouth moved soundlessly for a second or two, his eyes reflecting the golden light pouring out from within the hobbit hole. (Bilbo couldn’t stand shadows now. They all looked too much like orcs.)
“I would have been here sooner, Master Burglar, only I got lost.”
The sound of Thorin’s voice combined with the achingly soft look in his eyes suddenly became too much to bear and the contents of Bilbo’s stomach promptly forced its way back up his throat. Not wanting the bitter mouthful to go flying all over Thorin, Bilbo slammed the door in the dwarf kings face and vomited in his own umbrella stand.