Ring Shenanigans Chapter 2
Bilbo gets everything juuuuust right, maybe.
Hello! Another chapter so soon? Yes, because I enjoy striking while the iron is hot and I didn’t write for three days straight for no reason. Expect the rest of the chapters to come out within the next few days (or a week to two weeks from now for those on the free tier)! I’ll slip this button in here just in case y’all wanted a reminder:
Anyways, on with the chapter!
On the Valar, Bilbo nearly yanks the ring out of his pocket to pitch it into the forest. No! Not again! Things were going so well before! And now all that progress undone! A stream of curses are pitched into the veil of trees in place of the ring, since Bilbo doesn’t care to be manhandled through time again. He sits in the lengthening shadows of sunset and thinks. He can reset the timeloop again to save the dwarves when he has a solution.
So. He can’t be too brash with his revelation of time travel, or he is killed by suspicion. He can’t be too brash with fighting the orcs, or he is killed by orcs. How to get the dwarves past all their enemies unscathed and in time to open that damn door! He’ll have to be clever, he realizes. Sleight of hand and sleight of tongue will have to be his tools. To guide them without letting the see the lead they are tethered by.
Much easier said than done for twelve dwarves and a wizard on the leash.
Screaming from the north. The dwarves are in the trees, and Bilbo knows if he looks up he’ll see smoke and if he waits much longer he’ll see flames. He knows it’s too late to save them this time around. He stays sitting, and his lungs burn with the tears building in his eyes and dripping down his cheeks.
He hears Kili cry out in agony, then Balin, and he can’t take the sound anymore. He snatches the ring from his pocket and throws it.
By the ninth loop he knows that it is very important that he has his heartfelt talk with the dwarves, though it doesn’t seem to matter whether that happens before sunset or after. He knows that there are very few ways to save Thorin’s life without being killed by Gandalf’s suspicion of his brain being possessed by the ring if the orcs catch up to their party. He is working on that dilemma.
By the fifteenth loop, he has found that, if he is very careful, and if he uses the ring, he can kill all of the orcs before they reach the dwarves, and still reach the dwarves in time to have that incredibly important talk about home. However, if he does this, the eagles have no reason to come and get them, and they become miserably lost in Mirkwood after Gandalf leaves them to meet Galadriel. Bilbo drops the ring while fighting the spiders in the forest.
On the sixteenth loop, Bilbo has it all just right. He kills half the orcs before they reach the dwarves, but lets those orcs chase them to the cliff faces so that Gandalf calls the eagles, but because Azog retreats to chase down whoever killed half the pack, he’s not there to incense Thorin into challenging him to single combat or whatever the fuck. A silver tongue has Gandalf believing it’s his own idea to ask the eagles to drop them off near Long Lake, and then they rest there before continuing on around the lake’s edge. It’s all going swimmingly. They bypass Laketown entirely, since they never happen to encounter Bard, and aren’t low enough on supplies to need a restock either. They hike up to Erebor three weeks before Durin’s day, set up camp a stone’s throw from the staircase to the door, and wait.
In this time, with Gandalf flitting in and out on his errands, Bilbo painstakingly rebuilds the friendships he’s had (or grieved) for decades. It’s nothing like what he had, but it rhymes, and he’ll take that.
He considers how he’ll kill Smaug. Letting the people of Laketown be massacred and displaced from their home is unacceptable-- was before and still is. Though Bilbo has never been a strategist, he does know that allowing the destruction of the only nearby, established settlement just before the Battle of Five Armies is, strategically, not great. Two foes. Could he convince them to fight each other? If he timed it right then maybe. When did the orcish armies come? Was it one week after the Desolation? Ten days? A fortnight?
No, no, Bilbo remembers. It was twenty restless, anxious days biding Thorin’s temper and his guilt over hiding the Arkenstone. Twenty days wringing his hands and seething with frustration over his helplessness over the fate of Laketown, when his carelessness led to its ruin. Twenty days it was, for sure. That’s twenty-two days from Durin’s Day. Yes, yes, he remembers this clearly. If he can stall Smaug for twenty-two days after Durin’s Day, then he could maybe trick the old fool into killing the orcs for them. Or having the orcs kill Smaug. Either way, pitting them against each other must be the best bet.
These kinds of concerns occupy Bilbo’s mind, along with a paranoid sleeplessness that has Balin trying to tell him bedtime stories, of all the damned things that sweet old fool could be doing! But he lets the dwarves fuss over him in their own loud and arrogant and lovely ways, and pretends they are the versions of them he remembers.
And then, one week exactly before Durin’s day, he sits them all down and tells them a story.
He tells them a story of a powerful ring picked up by hapless accident, of a dragon, of a king maddened by a mountain, of a battle, of death, of grief, of adopting your cousin’s son because the boy reminds you of a young and dead dwarf, of a timeloop.
The first to speak is Bombur, worry creasing his brow. “How many times have you done this?” he asks.
Bilbo answers, “Sixteen.”
Murmurs of shock ripple through dwarves and the wizard. Gandalf puffs apprehensively on his pipe.
“You won’t—” Ori stammers, “You won’t give it to Sauron though, will you Mr. Baggins?”
Bilbo makes a face that makes some of the dwarves laugh. “No,” he answers, “I will not bring the ring to Sauron.” This relaxes Ori and Gandalf, who had been reaching for that blasted staff again. “But, when we’re done here, I may need help finding a way to, ah, dispose of it?”
“Mount Doom is the only place such a thing is possible,” Gandalf muses, “but you would have to drop it into the flame, effectively resetting your, er, ‘loop,’ as you call it.”
“Is there any other way?” Gloin asks. Gandalf’s answering look is less hopeful than if he had audibly told them no.
But Bilbo finally has them all understanding, so a dip in the morale won’t do. “We can discuss that issue later-- I’ll dip my hand into the flames myself if I need to!”
“We’ll find another way,” Thorin says with the finality only kings can manage. He glances sidelong at Bilbo. “Burglars need their hands,” he mutters. At his age of 111, plus some half a year with this timeloop business, Bilbo should be well past blushing at such a thing, but the warm glow of firelight hides his affliction well.
“What if the timeloop does reset?” Fili asks. He seems troubled, eyes filled with the kind of strategic thoughts that would have made him a good king-- will make him a good king, this time around-- “You’ve had sixteen ‘loops’ so far, what if you trip and drop the ring, or something, Durin preserve us, something happens to you?”
“Don’t even speak of such things,” Dwalin snaps, his own brand of worry.
But Gandalf interrupts, “Fili is right. Bilbo, have you not tried explaining this to us before?”
“I have,” Bilbo replies, “and you kill me with your staff every time, believing me possessed by the ring.”
Gandalf blanches a little, embarrassed if wizards are capable of such a thing, and hums thoughtfully in his throat. The dwarves, understanding the issue but having no possible claim to expertise in the area, think to themselves as well. Bilbo is unconcerned, as he will-- unhappily, perhaps, griping and grumbling the whole way-- redo this timeloop as many times as it takes to get all twelve dwarves on the other side of the dragon and the battle and the rest of it, unharmed and alive.
After long enough of this that Bilbo is starting to consider changing the topic, Gandalf’s near-silent muttering grows loud enough to be heard. “It may,” he muses, “just perhaps, mind you, but there’s a chance—”
“What chance?” Bombur asks. He’s rebraiding his beard with nervous hands.
“I may have a spell,” Gandalf says.
Hope is palpable in Bofur’s voice. “To end the timeloop?”
But Gandalf shakes his head. “A spell of remembering,” he clarifies. He doesn’t seem fully satisfied with his own response, grimacing and toying with his pipe, and neither do the dwarves. “It’s not meant to work across time though. It’s meant as a preventative before forgetting spells.”
To himself, Bilbo is wondering why every previous version of Gandalf decided to go straight to the murder before investigating this little party trick, but the rational part of him understands the suspicion and the ring and all that lot of it. It chafes, but bigger fish are here to fry. “I’ll take any help I can get,” he says. If Gandalf remembers the timeloop, Bilbo won’t have to go about trying to slow-step him into it while worrying about being killed. That’s been one of his biggest obstacles so far. “How do we do this spell?”
Gandalf hems and haws with himself for a moment. “Well, it’s quite simple, I just cast it with my staff—”
“Just like that?” Dwalin interrupts. “Let’s get on with it then!”
“Are there any reasons not to?” Oin asks.
Dori nods excitedly. “Yes, yes, should we be worried about side effects?”
With a slow shake of his head, Gandalf replies, “No. No side effects. Just that, well,” he shrugs, a discomfiting gesture on a wizard, and grimaces again. “It’s just such a weak spell, I’m afraid it may not do much at all, in the circumstances.”
Desolation seeps into the company. Several dwarves hang their heads, while others scratch their beards as they try and think through the predicament in their own way—the way of toymakers and cooks and kings.
“Well,” Bilbo says, buoying himself up as best he can, “I’d prefer to try it than not. Gandalf, if it’s not too much trouble, would you kindly?”
Maybe Gandalf expected the optimistic pragmatism of hobbits, he certainly gives Bilbo a fond smile, acquiescing with a raise of his staff and a brief incantation. A glow sparks at the end of his staff casts over all twelve dwarves, though Dwalin insists he doesn’t feel anything at all.
All plans laid as best as they can be, the company discusses what to do about the battle and the dragon.
They go with Bilbo’s initial thought of pitting the two against each other, and so they open the halls of Erebor and then wait twenty-two hand-sitting, restless, nail-biting days. When they hear the boots and horns of war, Bilbo greets Smaug.
It goes very differently this time. Bilbo’s tongue is smoother, having already faced his own death a half-dozen times, give or take, the threat of it no longer looms so large. He tells Smaug an army of orcs has come to steal his gold, and that Bilbo, a longtime admirer, couldn’t just wait and watch the great dragon Smaug be caught unawares!
And Smaug, overconfident, believes this and flies his hoard to melt orc flesh. The people of Laketown, who had been barricading doors and crafting makeshift weapons, watch in awe as Smaug the Terrible scorches their would-be invaders before Long Lake has even been breached. Bard the Bowman still sees that a dragon, after the battle, is safer dead than alive, readies his singular black arrow, and hits that one missing scale. The orc army is decimated, the dragon is dead, Bard is heralded as a hero, fate tracks it’s course, and Bilbo breathes a sigh of relief that, now, he can finally turn his attention to getting rid of this blasted ring before Sauron gets any ideas (sixty years from now) about overthrowing civilization.
But there is one more score to be settled.
Azog the Defiler had broken off from his main army when it was clear they would lose, and will find contentment only in ending the line of Durin.
The other dwarves are working their way down the great stone stairs toward the main entrance to Erebor, only Thorin and Bilbo left above, observing the battle of dragon and orc from a vantage point on an icy outcrop. Bilbo had so wanted to avoid Ravenrock, but it had somehow been agreed upon as the rendezvous point from which to watch the battle without risking dragon sickness.
No warning but a gentle breeze, Azog is going for the throat before anyone realizes it, and he nearly splits Thorin’s skull, but both dwarf and hobbit dodge, and the mace comes down on the ice below them instead. Bilbo, paranoid edge finally given something to cut, unsheathes Sting in an instant and jabs Azog in the side. The Defiler howls with pain and takes a momentary knee, and as Thorin unsheathes his blade, Bilbo hops up to Azog’s shoulders and brings Sting down on the juncture between neck and shoulder once, thrice, six times. Blood pours down to the cracks in the ice. Thorin drives his blade into Azog’s chest as he flounders for his lost blood, and the blow sends Azog stumbling back and around before, finally, falling backward and crashing through the weakened ice.
With Bilbo still blade-deep in his shoulder.
The water is, of course, frigid, but what Bilbo knows will kill him is the fact that his head was what smacked the ice first and, cracked or not, ice is solid. The back of his head is warm where the blood leaks out. After half a dozen experiences, Bilbo can feel death coming like a warm hand pulling him toward fading sunlight.
Wait. No. That was Thorin. He’s dragged Bilbo above water and is clutching him close, ensconced in warmth.
Bilbo laughs, wet where the water splutters out. “Awful, isn’t it?” he crows. “Well, it was about your turn, I should say.”
“Be quiet,” Thorin hisses over the sound of the rest of the dwarves scrambling up those great stone steps in a panic. “Save your strength.”
“Shall I wax poetic about how you should spend the rest of your life remembering me fondly?”
“No,” Thorin says, he sounds touchingly choked up. “I won’t remember you. You’ll be with me.” Bilbo laughs louder at the stubbornness of dwarves and pats Thorin’s hand where it rests on Bilbo’s lapel. Or, he tries, but with the concussion he misses and ends up patting Thorin’s forearm.
“Oh, I am enjoying this,” he muses, to himself now, as his vision fades. “Finally give you a taste of your own medicine. Quite cathartic, I must say.” The rest of the company hasn’t yet reached them. Shame, Bilbo wanted to say goodbye. He got to know them the best so far. “Thorin?”
Thorin’ voice cracks around the word, “Yes?”
“See you in a moment.”
And then Bilbo is out of breath at the edge of the goblin caves.
Bilbo Baggins, dying in the arms of the dwarf he loves: HA! ur turn idiot!
Love y’all. Have a great day, and scream at me in the comments— nothing brings me more joy :D
Bilbo is becoming a master of leaving psychic damage in his wake