The bowl gently steamed in front of him, and Bifur inhaled the scent appreciatively. He had done his best for years, but living on the edge of poverty – living with his two cousins to care for, and then Kíli as well – he had to make compromises. He foraged what he could, but sometimes the majority of what they ate was brought down with Kíli’s bow.
But in Erebor…. The first winter they all scrounged as well as they could. But once trade started in the spring, Erebor was a land of plenty. And Bifur was a figure of note, a hero in his own right and the foster father of one of the beloved princes.
He dipped his spoon into the bowl, scooping up barley and vegetables and a creamy broth. He put it in his mouth and savored it. He could taste that nothing had died to give him this meal. And he had tasted enough death over the years to be sick of it.
Óin was a sourpuss and a stick in the mud, too concerned with his craft to think about other people. As far as his cousins and brother were concerned, he barely knew who they were, more interested in plants than he’d ever be in them. They introduced themselves every time they spoke with him for years.
He forgave them for it. They were far younger than he was – all but Balin – and he had always been a private person, even as a child.
Míz had also been a student of medicine, and that was how they had gotten to know each other. Óin didn’t speak of his studies with his parents. When he had been young, he had somehow gotten the impression that others would think he was getting their help and not working on his own merits. They were respectful enough to give him his privacy.
But he found that he wanted to speak of medicine and herbs with someone, and Míz filled that space for him. They compared notes, argued about dosages and methods of providing. They studied together, experimented together, interned together. There came a time when Óin found he didn’t know what to do with himself without Míz by his side.
When he found that feeling was mutual, his chest felt as tight with emotion as it had before his first surgery. Míz laughed at the comparison, but Óin had always been intense and directed in his emotions.
They started to quietly move their lives together, stealing brief moments to share a word or a swift touch. They found a home they could live in together – small, but more than enough room for two private people – and had made a payment toward it. Óin was home to pack up his things. He hadn’t told his parents, and they deserved to know where and why he was leaving their home, so he waited for them.
All he had wanted to do was slip away into the tent city the refugees of Erebor had built on the plain near the capital of Gondor. They had spent the day begging for the scraps of work the noblemen had thrown their way – as if Dwarf made goods weren’t better than anything they could ever hope to make themselves. After that humiliation, all he wanted to do was wrap himself in Dwalin and hide away from the world.
But no. His father and grandfather demanded his presence at a feast held “in their honor” by the Men of the city. Thorin crossed his arms and glared out across the room at the elaborately dressed Men and Women, the Dwarves in their simple, travelstained clothes standing out among them.
“You’re sulking.”
In another context, the deep voice whispered close to his ear could make him shiver, but right now he just wanted to be angry. “I’m not,” he said, and even he could hear the sulking tone in his voice.
“We need this,” Dwalin reminded. “If we don’t keep them happy we have nowhere to spend the winter. You’re the oldest prince. You can’t make a bad impression.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!” Thorin exclaimed, voice loud enough to draw stares and frowns of disappointment from his father and grandfather. He lowered his voice to a hiss, glad that his bear would cover most of his mortification. “I will sulk all I want,” he finished in a hiss.
For her part, Dwalin just looked amused. “Tell you what,” she said, amusement in her voice as well. “Men can’t tell Dwarf men from women. Bet they’d love a royal wedding to twitter over. Give me a kiss and I’ll play your blushing bride all winter.”
Thorin glanced up, sorely tempted but not wanting to give up his sulk. Dwalin leaned down and kissed him, reaching out to tug at his hand. “Now let your promised feed you and then give me a dance, hm? We don’t get the chance all that often.”
Thorin made a show of acting reluctant as he rose and allowed Dwalin to pull him across the room. The scandalized looks from Men who only saw beards and made assumptions from that made it worth it.
Dwalin glanced back, heat in her eyes, and that made it worth it too.
There had to be someone else who was capable, no matter what Dís said. Thorin had things to do. They were barely settled in the Blue Mountains. There were still ongoing negotiations with the Men and Dwarves who lived there. There were homes to set up, work to find, food to store. All things he needed to be seeing to as the leader of their people in his father’s absense. He didn’t have time to babysit.
He looked down at Fíli, so small and soft in his calloused hands. (It was nothing like what he remembered of being allowed to tote Frerin or Dís around when he was small.) He growled his annoyance and the baby just cooed back at him.
In the early refugee camps, Thorin had often gotten put in charge of the children. Thráin had quickly discovered that he had the knack for keeping them encouraged and getting them to do their part. Thorin had loved it, and secretly mourned growing into more adult roles. But the fact remained that he wasn’t that child anymore.
Fíli grabbed his thumb and blinked wide blue eyes at him.
Thorin looked around suspiciously to make sure they were really alone and then stuck his tongue out to make the baby laugh.
(Everyone lives au, going with extended movie canon that Thráin is alive during DoS. I promise not everything will end with weeping.)
Fresh air was sweet, and the sky was blue. There were sounds that filled the air that weren’t the screams of prisoners or the rough laughter of captors. After all of this time (how long had it been?) he couldn’t help but look and listen in wonder.
He couldn’t help feeling like there was something he should be doing, but it was always like that (was it really? What was always, anyway?). He wasn’t locked away. He wasn’t being tortured. There couldn’t be anything as important as just experiencing what it was like to have no new pain.
He wandered purposelessly, limping around trees and boulders. Sometimes he tripped over something he hadn’t seen – he only had one eye that worked, and it didn’t work well after all that time in the dungeon (how long had it been?). But that didn’t matter. Falling on his face or twisting an ankle, that didn’t hurt (shouldn’t it?).
He ate what he could find – berries and nuts (he didn’t like the ones that made him throw up), flowers, grass and leaves, dead things. And he kept moving, just in case. But that was no hardship – the colors of the world, even when it died and became all white (it was cold, but he hardly felt it), were more than he thought he would ever get tired of. And he had nothing to do except walk and eat, so it was no hardship at all.
The white cold left and colors blossomed into existence again. He followed them, followed animals that were waking up, followed the direction of the wind or a stream, followed one foot in front of the other when nothing else was more compelling. The colors were starting to change to fire again when he saw the first signs of others.
There were fields of cultivated food, and he did well stealing from them to feed himself. There were vegetables and roots that were good to eat, and there were animals. Some of them gave milk, and the bright sweetness of it on his tongue left him insensate with the glory of it.
Time had passed when he became aware again (how much time?) and he was no longer alone. Men surrounded him, talking harshly, demanding things in the tones of the Orcs who had held him for so long, and he shivered from fear.
The Men fell back as Dwarves arrived, moving confidently between them to approach. Their leader was a dark blur, blue eyes the only things that seemed clear. As he approached he paled to ash and his eyes widened.
“Father,” he said, voice a familiar rasp despite time (how long had it been?) deepening it and making it sad. He stepped closer. "Father,“ he repeated.
Thráin met his son’s eyes and wept for all he had missed.
Content notes: References torture and canonical character death
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana for encouragement & sanity-checking. Title means (approximately) Great Pit of Terrible Noise, aka Dol Guldur. Tharkûn is Gandalf.
Summary: Thráin in the pit of terrible noise
The stones screamed in Dol Guldur, as loud in Thráin’s stone-sense as the shrieks of orcish torment and glee in his ears, as his own shouts of fury and defiance. It was a cacophony of pain, misuse, abuse: the moan of metal twisted out of true, of rock prisoned into walls of fell purpose, mazy malice. He had been here so long, trapped, tangled in darkness, that Tharkûn blazed like mithril, blinding, cool, blessedly quiet. Map and key were safe in those hands. Would that his children were so. The clamor had taken their names. Taken his.
Well here’s the funny thing that I think @madamefaust has said more eloquently than I: his statements about Mirkwood weren’t actually that unreasonable even under dragon sickness. They were reasonably distrustful of Mirkwood, I’d say the others dwarves are a good benchmark for how Thorin would have acted normally. On the wall, for example, Kili still yells at Bard and Thranduil for possessing the Arkenstone. The hostility between dwarves and elves is still there, in fact it has been exacerbated by the fact Thranduil brought an army for… what exact purpose except to take the mountain for himself and its treasure now that Smaug is dead and the Company (along with Erebor’s rightful king) likely dead with him? Regardless of dragon sickness, Thranduil was very much in the wrong in the movie.
The bigger question would be, “how would the relationship with Lake-town/Dale/the Men be different?” Because for me the most hair-raising moment of Thorin’s dragon sickness was when he denied aid to refugees, having been one himself. That was to me the most OOC thing he did, in particular since they too were refugees of Smaug and his actions. The dwarves would rightfully be wary of a larger force and the treasure within, but it was clearly gold sickness that prevented Thorin from working out a better arrangement with them sooner. With the Men on his side, they could have mitigated the threat that the Elves posed. Also Dale was not only Erebor’s ally, but their lifeline for food and other supplies the dwarves don’t produce themselves. As I discussed in this meta post about the politics of the region, Erebor needed a new Dale to make the city what it once was, it was disastrous to do anything but try to woo the Men to the dwarves’ side again. That allowed Thranduil to swoop in with food and begin political maneuverings which, if successful, would cripple the future strength of Erebor. Without Dale, Erebor could never sustain the kind of populace it once had, keeping it a minor regional power instead of the major one it once was.
So to sum up, had Thorin snapped out of his dragon sickness sooner, he could have gotten the men of Lake-town on his side sooner with promise of money to rebuild Dale, which Erebor needs almost as much as the Men do. The Men on his side would have given him a better position of strength with which to negotiate with Thranduil, but Thranduil vs. Thorin / Mirkwood vs. Erebor / Elves vs. Dwarves would likely have remained just as hostile, but perhaps Thranduil would have actually been forced to negotiate rather than move instantly to saber rattling?
I think what got me with Thorin not helping the Men of Laketown was what he said. To paraphrase, “they should feel lucky. They’re alive.” And it very much sounded like he was quoting. Not that the audience ever heard anyone say that, but it very much rang as something that had been said to the Dwarves when they first lost Erebor. Which means it’s not just that Thorin is refusing to help refugees but that he’s taking revenge on the (descendents of the) people who refused to help him when he was a refugee.
It’s not something I think Thorin would normally do, but it very much seems like something he’s held in for decades. So the Dragon Sickness is bringing up his petty “now let them feel what we felt” and not letting him get past punishing people for not helping the Dwarves when everything started.
And that’s certainly something that Kili (the one he says that to) would miss. By the time Fili and Kili were born, the Dwarves were no longer in that position. They had a home, even if it was a poor one, and a place of their own where they didn’t have to beg for aid that didn’t come.
AU: Combined AUs (Flame of Durin, Gaearon Rhûnen, No Shield For My Soul, Northern Night) Word Count: 100 Characters: Bofur, Binur (OC, Bofur’s father) Timeframe: After Azanulbizar
When the survivors return from the last battle against the orcs at Khazad-Dûm, Bofur searches the faces for those of his kin who had left so many years before. No one, not in the first or the second groups. There are more still coming, they tell him, with the King, and all he can do is hope.
He wakes up in the middle of the night to his father standing in the doorway with a candle, watching with quiet relief. Alive.
“Our kin all lived.” Binur smiles, tired, bitter and proud all at once. “Even Thorin was not so lucky.”
There's a Mirror on the Wall 