Chapter Text
"You all KNEW?!" Bilba wasn't sure whether to cry or punch the grin off of Kili's face. She and Dwalin had barely finished loading up her little cart and hitching up Bofur (the four-footed one, not the one with the broken nose) when Kili, Ori, Bifur and Bombur had come over the hill to join them. Ori had looked terribly worried as he went to check on Bofur, twisting his knitted arm-warmers around and around on his wrists, while Bifur seemed completely unconcerned and Bombur just laughed.
"It's not the first time his nose has been broken for pulling a stunt like that," commented the fat dwarf with a knowing chuckle, and Bilba turned to scowl at him.
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"Who, Bofur? Lass, he flirted with you for months, and you never so much as batted an eyelash in his direction. I thought you were immune." Bombur shrugged, while Bifur grunted his agreement, dark eyes sparkling with amusement. Bilba gaped. Months? Bofur? She turned a little to look at the dwarf, who was still bleeding, and looked rather dazed as he sat on the back of her little cart and pinched his nose gingerly to stop the blood flow.
"No, he- I- you-" She spluttered as Bifur and Bombur laughed, and Kili giggled up his sleeve. "I- Thorin! I meant Thorin!" When she finally managed to shout her actual meaning, Bombur lifted a genial eyebrow at her.
"Us? Stop Thorin? An orc pack couldn't stop Thorin. What makes you think we would be able to?"
"Stop yer jabberin'," growled Dwalin, who still seemed almost to be smiling. "We have a long way te go before we catch up with 'im." He turned and said something in Khuzdul to Bifur, who nodded and answered in the same gruff tongue. Bilba didn't understand a word, but that was how they liked it, and Dwalin lost no time in setting her on the driving board of her own cart and hooking his fingers through Bofur's bridle (not the one with the broken nose--if he had a bridle, Dwalin certainly wouldn't be the one grabbing it). They set out together, plodding along at a fair pace over the little hills and around little dells like the one that Bilba had hidden her "prisoners" in. She was rather disgruntled (and quite a bit more unsettled than she wanted to admit) about the fact that apparently everyone had known perfectly well that she was holding Thorin captive, and none of them had thought their king needed rescuing. She was even more disturbed to learn that there were, in fact, rumors among the Guard that this was a sort of courtship ritual, and that they expected Thorin to return to the Mountain with his new bride.
"I have at least ten bets laid against my saying you won't marry Thorin until you're both back in the Mountain," said Kili happily, grinning. "Though I might have lost to the ones saying you were engaged. You're not, are you?"
Bilba was positive her face was permanently stained the shade of a brick. "Kili, your uncle tried to kill me and had me banished--aren't any of you surprised that I'm here at all?"
The young dwarf traded a glance with Ori, who smiled nervously and answered her question with another question--this was a habit she had never been able to decide whether she liked or not.
"Did you really think we just let you leave the Mountain without anyone to keep an eye on you?"
If Bilba hadn't been riding on her cart, she might have tripped over her own feet in surprise. "What's that supposed to mean?" There was a mixture of insult and anxiety in her tone, and Ori seemed to hear it. He was better at detecting and identifying such things than most of the others.
"Well, we were worried about you. So... we made sure you were followed. We never thought that you would stay away for so long, though."
Kili nodded his agreement, his expression becoming briefly sober. "Yeah, we thought you just needed a bit of space, and that you'd be back in a few days." A grin split across his face and he nudged the halfling with a chuckle. "You didn't think all your roaming was uneventful because you planned it, did you?"
"But... I didn't... who was following me?" Bilba probably shouldn't have been surprised when Kili jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Bifur, who smiled and waved sheepishly.
The rest of their journey was comprised mostly of Kili relating sections of Bifur's reports to them, endlessly nudging Bilba over the places she'd gone and the people she'd met. Traveling about and becoming a healer was apparently very amusing for the young dwarf, and he didn't get tired of it until nearly noontime, when Dwalin hit him over the head and told him that if he didn't shut up, he would let Bilba have at him with a stick of firewood. They arrived at the Mountain by nightfall, by which point Bilba would have happily fallen into a bed and not moved for a week, but there was someone waiting for them at the gate.
At first, she thought it was Thorin. Then she realized that the dwarf she was looking at was wearing a skirt. Her toes started to feel cold, a sure sign that things were about to get dangerous. Her toes had always got cold around her cousin Lobelia, too, though for entirely different reasons, she was sure. She had never been in danger of being throttled by Lobelia.
"Would one of you," said the female dwarf, and her voice was smoother and a little lighter than Thorin's, "like to explain to me why my brother is locked in his study with a bottle of wine?"
"Because he went out to court trouble and got it full in the face." Dwalin folded his arms, looking unintimidated. The rest of their group, however, seemed to make up for the bald warrior's lack by showing it in spades. Ori was hiding behind Bofur, who seemed to be intently studying his toes. Bifur and Bombur looked nearly shamefaced, while Kili grinned nervously.
"You could say he got it over the head," he said with a halfhearted laugh, which trailed off weakly when Dis turned her unforgiving gaze on him
"And who is this?" Without shifting her eyes from her younger son, she pointed at Bilba, who wished she still had a pony to hide behind.
"Bilba Baggins. Amad, she's the one I told you about, who saved us all those times."
"Mm-hm." Dis' tone was skeptical at best, and Dwalin stepped forward.
"Regardless, Princess, she's Thorin's One, and I intend to see they're in the same room long enough to beat confessions out of each other, even if it kills both of them."
Thorin looked up when the lock on his study door clicked open. He frowned at his sister, who didn't look apologetic in the least as she tucked a key into her pocket.
"Where did you get that?" he asked bluntly, pointing at her pocket with the same hand that held a stone goblet, which appeared to be empty at the moment. The goblet was clearly an heirloom of sorts, its glossy black bowl inlaid with silver and carved with the crest of Durin's house. The fact that he was drinking out of it ought to have said something about his state of mind, but Thorin didn't particularly care what others might or might not read into his actions, and poured more wine into his cup.
"I made a copy in the first week I was here." Dis' answer neither comforted nor amused him, and he scowled.
"You have no right. This is my study, and there's a lock on the door for a reason."
Dis rolled her eyes. "Right. It has a lock on the door so you can come in here and drink yourself stupid while my son runs your kingdom for you. I think not."
It was times like these that Thorin wished he had been an only child. Having two siblings, he'd always been counted as blessed. He suspected, somewhat sourly, that if his brother-in-law hadn't been killed, then his sister would have had three children as well. Two was more than enough.
"Your sons will inherit. Isn't that enough for you? Leave me in peace, Sister. I have nothing to say to you." The wine disappeared down his throat quickly enough that he didn't have to taste it, and the dwarf sighed heavily. He hadn't expected his reunion with Bilba to go well, by any stretch of the imagination, but he had expected that she would still....
"Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself, Brother. I brought you a visitor." Dis took a step back, and there she was. Thorin felt his stomach turn inside-out as he gazed on a rather sheepish-looking hobbit.
"Haven't you done enough damage already?" Thorin's harsh question made Bilba twitch, and he felt bad for snapping so at her, even though he felt she deserved it. She shuffled into the study, hands clasped nervously before her, and Dis closed the door in her wake, locking it again behind her. Not that locking it did much, since Thorin still had his copy of the key. But now that they were alone together, he couldn't stop the veritable fountain of hurt that welled up in his chest.
"Why are you here, Bilba?"
The hobbit shifted nervously, inspecting her toes. "I... wanted to apologize." Now if that wasn't the biggest laugh of the century. Thorin filled his goblet again, scowling.
"For which part? Abducting me, knocking me out, or stabbing me in the back?" He might have wondered about the confused look on Bilba's face if he hadn't been so occupied with downing another large gulp of alcohol.
"What are you talking about? I didn't stab anyone."
"If you wanted to be with that idiot and his hat, you could have said so. I thought you and I..." He trailed off, not wanting to think about what might have been. It hurt. But so did the bewildered look she had on him now. As though she were the one hurt, and he was kissing someone else.
"You think... I'm in love with Bofur?"
"As if that wasn't obvious from the way you greeted him today." Thorin couldn't help the snide tone, but admitted to himself that Bilba didn't look like a hobbit who'd been caught doing something she was ashamed of. If anything, she looked relieved.
"I'm not."
"You're not what?" Perhaps he was just being belligerent (it wouldn't be the first time he'd been called that when he was drunk) but he wanted her to actually say what it was she was thinking, instead of expecting him to magically fill in the blanks.
"I'm not in love with Bofur."
The statement seemed so incongruous, so contrary, that Thorin spent several long moments staring at the halfling in silence while he processed her claim. At length, he shook his head slightly.
"You're... not."
"No." Bilba was even smiling slightly now, and took a step toward his desk, behind which he was still sitting, a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. "I never was."
Thorin looked at her, then he looked at the wine bottle in his hand, trying to remember how many drinks he'd already had. No more than four or five, he thought. Then he looked at Bilba again, and tried to determine if she was lying. He remembered after a moment that she was a terrible liar.
"Are you in love with me?" It was an uncouth question at best, but he was willing to bet the answer would solve a great many of his current problems. The halfling's face turned bright red and she avoided looking at him as she answered.
"That's a stupid question. Why do you even have to ask?"
"Because I want to hear you say it," he growled stubbornly. Bilba sighed.
"Yes, I love you, Thorin. Even if you are a half-drunk idiot." She crossed the rest of the space between her and the desk, and leaned across it to take the bottle away from him. Thorin didn't resist.
She loved him.
She didn't love Bofur.
"Then why did you kiss him?"
"Because you made me mad and I... well, I wanted to make you mad, too."
A brief, heavy pause. "Why didn't you kiss me?"
She fixed him with such a strange look that he briefly wondered if Kili had braided flowers into his hair again.
"You're Thorin bloody Oakenshield. I can't just kiss you!"
Thorin stood, and was only too happy to prove her positively, emphatically wrong.