Chapter Text
Bilbo was tired. He had seen the flames of Mount Doom explode in his face. He had drowned in the Brandywine river before ever reaching Rivendell. He had died defending his Company from the trolls. He'd died in Goblin Town. He'd died at the gates of Erebor, dropped from a mad Thorin's grip. He'd been run through, burnt to death, squished by a very angry dragon, drowned – multiple times, that was a particular nightmare, thank you – and killed by the sword so many times that the sheer thought of it had lost its shock to his system.
Bilbo was very tired. He would like to rest, please and thank you, but no one seemed to ask him what he wanted. Oh no. If he could find a Valar to kick he'd probably do it. Perhaps not Varda, though. She had always been lovely to him each time they met. Cryptic, but lovely. She had the best tea, too.
Anyway.
Bilbo was tired. Bilbo had been doing this song and dance longer than he'd like to think about. Each time he would be sent back to the hour before the Company arrived. He didn't even get a chance to tell Gandalf exactly where he could stick his pipe. Worse yet, each time he tried to change things, everything went wrong . Deaths here, there, everywhere. The last time 'round was the worst, with his Company dying due to some bat-spider thing Bilbo had never seen before in the bowels of the Misty Mountains and he'd still had to face that skinny little wretch for that damn Ring.
Bilbo was going to write a very strongly worded letter to Manwë and he hoped the Vala would choke on it. And perhaps expire. So then Manwë could get the dubious pleasure of reliving his life over and over and over and over and over and...
Well. All this to-ing and fro-ing had perhaps made him just a little mad.
Anyway.
Bilbo let out a long breath and let his head thunk back against his favorite chair. At least his chair never changed. Nor did Bag End. Always lovely. Always quiet. Always a small moment for him to catch his breath –
shake like mad, cry until his eyes turned red, huddle in a corner while dwarves pounded on his door, pull at his hair, wish he were really dead because then this wouldn't keep happening –
...Anyway.
The daylight was fast fading. Soon Dwalin would come banging at his door. Bilbo knew where every bit of his pack lay in the house, but it was a struggle to get up, a struggle to do more than stare into the fire and wonder how he was going to muck up his meeting with the Company this time. He never managed to get off on the right foot with them. Being gruff just got him punched. Being nice made them all distrust him. Being too familiar had got him held at knife point until Gandalf had broken them all up, but then the wargs had come and well. Bilbo had restarted his life soon enough after that. Dwarves, he had learned from painful experience, were slow to trust but quick to make a judgment about a body – at least in his case. He was rather tired of it.
So many times he had tried to prove himself to them. Each time making a feast or a special meal, or making them go to the Green Dragon – a particularly bad idea, that one time, never again – or making just a larger portion of his own dinner...none of it impressed them. None of it got him an approving nod. He never knew what they wanted from him. Too much food was him throwing his 'soft life' in their faces. Turning them away meant he hated dwarves. He still wasn't sure why sharing his own food with them was such a scandal, since Dwalin had eaten Bilbo's dinner once, but when he'd learned that it was Bilbo's he'd promptly gone and made himself sick in the bath to get it all out.
That had been a very strange, if short journey. None of his dwarves had seemed, well...right. Darker. Meaner. It had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He still wasn't sure how he'd died that time.
Anyway.
Bilbo stared into his quiet little fire and wished, for one long moment that this time 'round the Company would bypass him altogether. Choose someone else for their little Adventure. But even then...even then it made his heart hurt. His Company was his Company. He'd heard his hearth-kin song from the moment Dwalin had shown up. None of them had seemed to hear it. None of them had been particularly nice – well. No, Bofur had been sweet that one time 'round when Bilbo had made it through the Battle of Five Armies, only to watch Thorin and the boys die...and then find out his Ring was the One Ring and that had been a particular mess of dying on the slopes of Mount Doom, trying to outrun an exploding volcano.
He didn't recommend it.
Each time he lost one of them his hearth-song lost a note in its melody. He hated that. He'd tried, many times ago, to just ditch them all in the Shire, but Gandalf had brought him back. He had lost all standing in their eyes that time 'round. He didn't know how to keep them all alive. Thorin never seemed to trust him, Carrock or not, there was always some sort of distance between them that Bilbo could not bridge. Of them all the Ur family had always been the most, well, not polite, exactly, if one went by the standards of hobbit society, but at least not actively hostile? You'd think Ori, with his love of books, would have been an easier dwarf to win over, but Dori guarded his family like a dragon Bilbo was never going to mention again, thank you Nori for that delightful time with the knives and the strange threat of shaving him and –
Oh. There was someone knocking at his door. Drat. He'd gotten lost in his head again.
So needless to say Bilbo was tired. Perhaps that's why, when he got up to answer the ceaseless pounding, all he did was yank the door open, stare at Dwalin and his upraised fist and say, “That's very rude.”
Dwalin blinked at him, fist still raised. The silence between them stretched.
Bilbo sighed and stepped back, waving the dwarf inside. “Do get off my stoop. And mind your boots, thank you,” Bilbo said over his shoulder as he closed the door and headed for the kitchen. “I've food if you're hungry. Help yourself.”
Dwalin had still said nothing. That was strange. There was usually some sort of blustering or threat or growl or something. Ah, who cared. Bilbo was tired. He wasn't about to bend over backwards for them this time 'round. Either way he'd just end up here again.
Bilbo stood in the middle of his kitchen, hands on his hips, staring at his cupboards. He'd meant to make himself some fish but the whole production of it was just...too much. Instead he unearthed his last stash of biscuits and set to nibbling on them as he set out cured meats and cheeses and got out plates for the rest of the Company to help themselves to his larder – as they always did.
Potatoes went onto the fire. Parsnips and turnips went into the oven. Perhaps he would have some of that, later. He caught Dwalin lingering in the doorway out of the corner of his eye and nodded to the plates set out and the food on the table. “As I said,” Bilbo didn't bother hiding his sigh. “Help yourself.”
“Ye seem a bit...unprepared.”
Bilbo stopped, blinking a few times at the wall. That was odd. Dwalin never talked to him. Ever. How strange. “Well,” Bilbo told the wall. “That's because I am.”
He heard Dwalin scoff, even as the scrape of china told him Dwalin had at least started to fill his plate. “You're the last to join us. You had the most time to prepare. 'S just rude fer ya not to –”
“What did you just say?” Bilbo whipped around to point at Dwalin's nose. “No, put that down. What most time to prepare? Why would I have time to prepare?”
Dwalin scowled at him, his plate held to his chest. “The wizard said you'd be ready to go. Not sure why you're all a mess. Yer house ain't even done up. And we're supposed to trust you with our Quest?”
That...that was news to Bilbo. “I just saw Gandalf today,” Bilbo said faintly. There was a distinct ringing in his ears. “I had no warning. Just a wizard, showing up at my door and turning my whole world upside down. No, I had no time to clean my house, or even contact my gardener. I told him no,” Bilbo blinked and Dwalin was in front of him, plate gone and brows drawn together in a mighty frown. “I think I need to sit down.”
“Laddie –”
Bilbo caught sight of Dwalin lunging for him, plate and food gone flying, before darkness took him.
~*~
Thorin stared at the round green door, hand tight on the pommel of his sword. Long had they known their Quest would lead them here. Night after night they would dream of different outcomes, warnings, their people who were called to the service of their Maker had said. Thorin had known his Company before Erebor had even been destroyed. No word of warning from Thorin's lips had been able to save them from that terrible day. At best Thorin had been able to save more of his people, but his father then had more souls to drag to the doors of Khazad-dûm and the horror of the hordes of orcs and other vermin there. Oakenshield he had earned as his name, then, trying – and failing – to stand before the waves of his enemies and save the people he had brought out of the Calamity's fire.
Thorin had cursed those strange dreams so many times over the long years of his life. And now, now they were here, standing in front of the strange round green door that always appeared in their dreams. The halfling was beyond that door. The little one. The heart-stone. The betrayer. The thief. The beloved. Each dream they'd had of him, most times pleading with them, sometimes stealing from them, sometimes betraying them – or so they'd think – Thorin did not know how many times he had killed this little creature in his dreams. And each time it cut to the quick, made his chest ache and something crack in his soul. Each one of his Company, even gentle Ori, had killed the halfling. Each of them had seen to his death.
Then, inevitably, the world would turn strange, darkness would swarm over the land, the gold sickness would tear their people apart from the inside and they would all die with that one regret burning bright in their chests. Thorin did not know why this little creature, this halfling, this hobbit, was so important. Their priests and priestesses had all said that their dreams were warnings, messages, from their Maker. But what did they mean? No one could answer, not even Tharkûn. They couldn't even get him to remember the conversations they'd had with him. It was like they had never spoken, never said a word.
But, it had come to Thorin, during his long wandering through this strange land, that in every dream they'd had, the halfling, the hobbit, had always tried to protect them. With food, with shelter, with some strange familiarity that made them all bristle with unease. The hobbit was a soft-bellied creature, set in his fat, fertile lands, full of large families and sweet ease that their people never had. Why should he be so familiar with them? But each time they tried to put the hobbit in his place, treat him as they would another dwarf from another clan, the hobbit would die and the world would go strange again. Oh, they would retake Erebor. Most of the time. Sometimes they would die with the halfling, in strange and gruesome ways. But their Quest never failed, if they lived to see the end of it.
It was what happened after, without the hobbit, without this Bilbo, that made their dreams turn to nightmares for years on end.
“Uncle?”
“Keep an eye on him,” Thorin told the boys. They'd all met up at the lane below the strange hobbit hole. Dwalin had insisted on going ahead, to scout the way. The dreams were always clear on that. But the rest...there was never a set order. Thorin had no desire to be the last to arrive. So they'd gone as a group, waiting in the lane as Dwalin made first contact. They would wait half a candlemark and then follow him in.
But it was to no large feast, or family-style meal that had made Thorin snarl once in a dream. There was food burning on the stove, water boiling in a pot, but the hobbit was nowhere to be found. Thorin pushed through open the door to find Dwalin kneeling on the ground next to a pale hobbit – next to Bilbo – and something deep inside Thorin's chest cracked open, like a hollowstone opening to the light for the very first time.
Oh, Thorin thought, staring at that wan face with deep bruises under his eyes. From the look on Dwalin's face he felt it too. Thorin knelt next to his old friend, the one he knew from the moment the dreams had come to them on the day of a dark-light moon who would become one half of his heart-pair, and looked down at the small body of the hobbit, their Burglar, their Bilbo. No wonder their paths always led here. Their Maker did not make mistakes. Those dreams had been warnings, warnings to them to mind their heart-pair and not be blinded by darkness that was covering the world.
Thorin knelt next to Dwalin and for the first time since the dreams had started plaguing them all he did not know what to do.