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“I am Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror King Under the Mountain. I return…and I would have what is mine.” She has her back to him. He reaches out, grasps the burnished gold of her hair and feels the silky skin of her throat against his own rough fingers, resisting the growing temptation to press his hand in deeper, mark her with dusky blotches of ownership.
There will be time for that later. For now, her face will suffice, if she will turn to look at him. He wants her eyes, their wide soft lustre darker than any gem mined from under the earth. He wants to strip her slowly, watch her pale skin turn pink with a timid blush, her pupils dilating until darkness eclipses their vivid colour.
He wants all she has to offer and more. And she will give him his due. “I will take…what is mine…” Thorin whispers against her bright hair as he pulls her back against him, easing his hands down to hold her shoulders.
He hears her breathing, sharp rushed intakes like a racing hare, the kind Kili could bring down with a single arrow, and it satisfies something deep within him to know his presence affects her so. That he is branded deep onto her soul as she has worked her determined way into his.
The swish of her skirt as she spins to face him (and she is sharper than she looks, stronger than she seems, faster than you’d know to glance at her) puts him in mind of when she opened her door to him all those months ago and turned around with a sigh as he pushed past her in his pride and haste.
Thorin’s grip slides around her throat again, tilting her head up to make her look at him. He gains the briefest glimpse of the shadows her lashes cast on her warm cheeks before her eyes open.
Her skin goes cold beneath his touch, or perhaps she still burns bright and the true cold is his, as diamonds spill from her empty gaze and scatter across the floor, bright and hard and terrible.
Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Lonely Mountain, wakes with a start.
*
It wasn’t like that. He tells himself, taking a swig of ale from the flagon that rested on the table in the antechamber. He will not sleep again this night.
Now the fug of the dream has lifted, Thorin can remember that first night in Laketown as though it was a day ago. He had taken Billa up to his room, pulled her and kissed her and whispered to her until she’d come apart in his arms on the staircase and against the door and later on the wide mattress of the featherbed his rank and station afforded him.
It had not been the first time he’d had her, but it had been the first time he had seen her, naked and spread for him, free from the fears and constraints of the wild, and her touch had been beyond sweet when she yielded beneath him. Thorin shifts a little in his chair, trying grudgingly to dispel the remnants of arousal the memory affords him.
She lied to you, Thorin Thrain’s son. He reminds himself, and that does for it sharply. Perhaps even her love was a lie.
Later that night he had woken to find the bed empty, the spot she had curled in still warm. Panic rose and then fell just as swiftly when he saw her small form tucked into the windowsill, one of the blankets from the bed cocooned around her.
Such a little thing, and too oft in peril now for my liking. He had risen from the bed, no care for modesty, gone to her and brushed his fingers across her cheek to find it cool and clammy. Her face, wan and pale, its usual rosy countenance absent, had seemed to him thinner under the sickly glow of the crescent moon through the window.
“I’ve been sick…” She’d protested when his mouth found hers, and he knew, her lips pressed tight together against his own, dry and trembling with a slight salty hint of the brine she must have used to cleanse her throat afterward.
“No, no you mustn’t…”Billa had drawn away from him, small hands coming up to lie on his chest.
“Very free with your mustn’ts tonight, Miss Baggins.” Thorin had murmured darkly against her throat. “I seem to recall the opposite from earlier this evening, though.”
Billa laughed, rough and husky, with a catch in her throat that inflames him to this day. “I’ve more of a care for your vanity, should you catch this chill from me. You wouldn’t want to be reclaiming Erebor with a runny nose, now would you?” The tease in her words was light, but her eyes shone.
Thorin remembered kissing her then, hard and brief on the corner of the mouth. This she permitted, knowing what her words had woken in him. “We will wait here until you are well, then.” he’d whispered against her skin. “And when the mountain is mine once more, I will take you…’
“Shh, my love…” Billa’s hand had come up to still his words, and Mahal, it still hurts, even now when he has renounced her, that those two words had passed so easily through her lips once. “I know my duty to the company.”
She knew not what she said. She was in a fever, and never spoke it again. Her duty to the company, true- she had snuck into the mountain, found the treasure. And took the Arkenstone, kept it secret from me, to offer up to mine enemies. She trampled on whatever love I bore her, and flung it away before I ever did the same to her.
Thorin takes another swig of ale, flat and bitter though it is, it suits his mood. Thoughts of Billa Baggins always tend to put him in a maudlin state, no matter how justified he was in casting her aside.
Nevertheless, he had hoped for her return when he lay wounded- then, at his weakest when death had seemed near, he had thought he might forgive her. But as his strength had returned and he saw his kingdom restored, his people returning, looking to him to rule as it always should have been, Thorin knew that what Billa had almost done was beyond the pale.
She had put his heritage, his honour, below what she thought right, and whilst she was a sweet thing and good hearted, she knew nothing of kingship. Of losing one’s home, and what it meant when the one you loved, the one you adored, delivered it back to you only to try and snatch it away again.
The pale yellow light of dawn begins to infiltrate Thorin’s chamber from the skylights far above, and he realises that he has sat thinking of her for hours. Not usual, this- normally thoughts of Billa are fleeting, memories that are tied to the rest of the company.
How she would shake her head ruefully at Fili and Kili’s antics, chatter about books with Ori till past midnight, listen moist eyed to Gloin’s stories about his wife and young Gimli, the firelight glinting off her hair. Yes, those are all commonplace, and come and go as memories are apt to do.
The rest are his, and he keeps them close, rarely examined, in the darker corners of his mind. His, as she was and still is, for though he has relinquished her physically, resents her continued hold on him and will not suffer her name spoken in his presence, his claim to her still rests as the caverns of Erebor do-
unfathomably deep.
*
The Kingdom under the Mountain flourishes. Durin’s folk are returned and have made it their home once more- walls rebuilt, dwellings hewn out of rock and wood and stone, even mines beginning to yield again in the three years since the twelve dwarves of the company had re-entered Erebor.
Thorin, for his part, is content. This is what he has fought for, to see his people safe and thriving, the continuation of his line. Well, that will have to come with time, since neither of his sister-sons has shown any inclination to wed yet.
Still, there is hope, and a future, all the things he had dreamed of throughout his long years of exile. Seeing his sister-sons in their rightful places, safe and free from grief and pain, in the place that is his and Dis’ inheritance, Fili and Kili’s birth right…yes, when Thorin thinks of the years he spent praying for all of this, he considers himself the most fortunate of dwarves.
If once he had imagined it differently, it no longer mattered. That he had dared to hope that Billa Baggins would be at his side when the Arkenstone was placed above his throne, that she would share his bed and his hearth and her belly would swell with his trueborn heirs, that she would flit through the caverns and dungeons of Erebor on light burglars feet, calling his home hers as well- a fools dream, a reckless lovers whimsy.
Erebor is enough, he thinks- the crags and the Arkenstone, the sound of hammers and chipping of the gold in the mineshafts he walks through even now, Balin at his left side and Dain Ironfoot at his right, surveying the depths of his kingdom.
Fili should be beside him also, but he has asked permission to join the latest expedition to Ered Luin, planned ever the party led by Nori and Dwalin returned a few months ago. Given the diligence his nephew has shown in performing his duties since they have returned, Thorin feels able to let him go.
As for himself though, he will remain in his kingdom unless there is need. He is a dwarf-lord, and the wealth of the mountain will sustain him as well as his lifesblood does. It is real, and solid, there beneath his fingers and he will not lose it as he did Billa. Never again will Durin’s folk wander like hill born beggars, without a place to call their own.
“Thorin.” He is brought sharply back to his surroundings by Dwalin’s gruff bark coming from overhead. His old friend sets no store by titles unless they are in the presence of those who need to hear them, and Thorin would have it no other way.
“Go on without me.” He nods to Balin, who quickly takes the lead as Thorin heads back up to join Dwalin on the bridge overlooking the main cavern. “All’s well?” He inquires, and gets a brusque nod in reply.
“Aye, or at least I hope so. But there’s something you should see.”
*
In the rocky shadows beneath the foothills of the lonely mountain, a steep path leads to the road. The baggage train heading over the misty mountains to Ered Luin has already set off, but two figures linger in the half dark of dawn, heads bent close together.
“You’re sure about this?” The taller of the two asks the other.
“No. But I have to-”
“Try. I know. I only wish I could come with you.”
“Too conspicuous.”
The first speaker leans back, seeming to understand. “Keep it close, then. If you’re found out there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Not if things work out...”
“It is…hers?”
“Of course. Don’t know how Nori got ahold of it-”
“Lifted it, probably. I only found it by chance.”
“And you know that means he saw her.”
The shorter figure lifts a soft linen handkerchief from his pocket, wrapping the monogrammed stitching around his hand to show his companion.
“Alright.” The taller nods. “Be careful.” The two clasp arms momentarily, then seem to give up on formality and enfold each other in a rough embrace.
“You know me. Always have been.” The shorter figure turns and to walk away, only to be stopped by the sound of his name, spoken very quietly by the one he means to leave behind.
“Bring her home, brother.”
“If I can.
With that he turns and walks away, and his companion makes his way back inside the mountain, both unaware of the figures that stand far above them on the rebuilt battlements, hearing the echo of every word that has been said.