Ring Shenanigans Chapter 3
Spoilers: the part y'all have been waiting for!
Bilbo gathers his thoughts as he makes his way toward where the orcs will be about this time. What went wrong last time? Azog, that’s what! Bilbo should have killed him, Thorin’s emotional journey be damned! Yes, he’ll kill the whole orc pack this time, and then get Gandalf to call the eagles based on the memories the company should have of Bilbo’s timeloop. Yes. That will work well.
Really, that memory spell is solving so many problems!
So Bilbo picks off the orcs, one by one, dropping down from trees onto their mounts and slitting their throats before they catch on. The wargs wander, riderless, and eventually find their way back toward the goblin caves for easier, more plentiful prey than a company of scrappy dwarves.
Unencumbered by panic or desperation, Bilbo makes his way to the dwarves at a leisurely pace.
As he approaches, it becomes rapidly clear that they are not having their typical ‘hobbits should stay in the kitchen where they belong’ conversation, which is only comforting until Bilbo realizes that they are not calmly waiting for him as he expected either. Instead, most of them are cradling clutched heads between knees and moaning about seasickness. Notably, Gandalf is counting the dwarves as Bilbo knows he did already as they first exited the caves, and he is holding Thorin back by the collar of his shirt.
Snarling, Thorin wrenches his shirt from Gandalf’s grasp. “Do not speak to me of strength in numbers, you callous beast of a wizard!”
“Thorin Oakenshield, you did not witness Master Baggins’ murder!” Gandalf roars, only somewhat successfully cowing Thorin (Bilbo struggles not to piss himself with the way the shadows stretch and contort around Gandalf, as do a few of the less preoccupied dwarves). “We have been together since we exited Goblintown!”
“Then why are we all seasick except you?” Kili asks, and then returns his head to its spot between his knees.
“Why are we seasick at all if we’ve just been running?” Balin asks. He’s got the best composure of the dwarves at the moment-- typical for his character.
Dori catches on to the crux of it though: “Why can’t I remember what we were just doing before we stopped running?”
At this, Bilbo finally reveals himself. “I think I can explain.” The company is, one and all, delighted to see him. Without waiting to hear what Bilbo has to say, Thorin comes up and embraces him with arm strength that might find more apt use crushing his ribcage. “Ah, yes, thank you, Thorin.” It’s nice Thorin cared so much, but Bilbo can’t actually breathe like this, so he has to wait until he’s released to speak. “Gandalf, how are your countermeasures for spells of forgetting?”
Suspicion evident, Gandalf still answers, “They are not my strongest suit. Why?”
There is a momentary allowance for annoyance. It is healthy, Bilbo has learned in his long life, to allow feelings to run their course internally, so they don’t do so externally. For a good long exhale, he allows annoyance for stupid, cryptic wizards and especially for their giant staffs that they keep whacking you over the head with even though they chose you for this stupid adventure (and chose your nephew for another in the future! Ruining the Baggins name, truly! Not that the name and its reputation for placidity means much to Bilbo anymore), and annoyance for motion sick dwarves and their misunderstandings and the fact that they never remember!
“I thought you were dead,” Thorin says too quietly to be heard by the rest of the company. “Your head-- the ice--”
Bilbo is warmed to a smile. “So you do remember!”
Which is ill-advised, because while none of the company heard what Thorin just said, he’s been ranting and raving like a man driven insane the whole time Bilbo was picking off orcs, so they all know what he’s so upset about. They just thought he was having some kind of fit. Until Bilbo confirmed it as reality.
“What are we remembering?” Gloin clarifies.
And Dwalin, still looking green around the gills, says, “I think Master Baggins just admitted to dying.”
“But he’s right there,” from Bombur.
“No, there was--” Fili has his eyes screwed shut as he remembers, “there was a battle? Yes. There was. I remember running up the steps at Ravenrock.”
Because he has done his best to let his emotions run their course internally and he is still right and truly annoyed, he hisses to Gandalf, “Give your anti-forgetting spells some work, please.” Then, to the rest of the company. “There was a battle, you all did run up the steps at Ravenrock, except Thorin who happened to be right next to me when I died-- serves you right too, turnabout is fair play.”
“Turnabout…?” Dori mumbles and then, “Thorin died too!?”
“Well not just now!” Bilbo flaps a hand at him. “For me that was over sixty years ago. For you it never happened.”
Dwarves don’t enjoy being confused, and they tend to be fairly sticky about the linear concept of time as well, so this is going over about like a horse in a handbasket, with everyone shouting at each other, at Gandalf, mostly at Bilbo. And he’s got very much practice with confused dwarves and very much patience for these dwarves in particular, so he lets them yell their complaints and concerns and questions until Balin raises his voice a bit higher than the crowd and insists they get somewhere more secure so they can talk this all through and give Master Baggins a chance to explain.
“I don’t think they’ll be sending another orc pack very soon,” Bilbo notes, “but yes, it is getting dark and I’d prefer to get some supper on if it’s all the same to you.”
“Another?” Gloin echoes, blanching.
Rolling his eyes and really trying very hard to keep his annoyance internal, not external, because that’s the healthy way to go about it all, Bilbo says, “They’re always in the same spot. It’s quite easy to pick them off from the trees with some well-sized stones.” He avoids mentioning the One Ring’s stealth assistance because he hasn’t quite shown a character of trustworthiness yet, and he’d prefer not to be clubbed to death by a certain wizard.
While dinner is made and camp set up, the dwarves hound Bilbo with questions about the future, about themselves, about the quest. It’s less like they doubt him and more like they’re trying to find a way to prove to themselves that the vague echo of a memory they have of Bilbo dying is wrong somehow. Which Bilbo thinks is even more rude than doubting him, because he’s died half a dozen times now; they had better believe at least the most recent one!
“How is this possible?” Thorin asks very quietly. It’s not the first time it’s been asked, but it’s the first time it’s been asked nicely, with big, wet eyes like a puppy in a box in the rain, and it’s the first time Thorin has spoken since he confirmed Bilbo’s living status.
And, because of all that but mostly because Bilbo has never been able to deny Thorin anything except the shiny rock that possessed his psyche as the epicenter of an amount of gold large enough to create mental illnesses, he responds, “I’ve been trapped in a timeloop.”
“A timeloop.” Thorin echoes, lack of understanding clear in his tone.
“Yes,” Bilbo says. Mustering some courage with the fact that the dwarves probably won’t let Gandalf club him in suspicion, he pulls out the One Ring. “See this ring?” he says, showing it to everyone, “If I drop it, give it away, or die, I am put right back outside the goblin caves, watching you all be chased by orcs.”
Visibly pale, Gandalf says, “Do you know what it is that you hold?”
And Bilbo replies, “Yes, which is why we are headed to Mount Doom the moment we take care of Smaug and the orcish army that’s been sent to try and take Erebor once we open it.”
“There’s an army coming!?” Dwalin cries. “Why are we loafing around here then!?”
Fili waves him off. “No, he said the army won’t come until after we open the mountain anyway.”
“You’re all putting the cart before the horse,” Bilbo interrupts before the dwarven hullabaloo can begin again in earnest. “I’ve killed this orc pack, Azog included-- don’t look at me like that, Thorin, he killed me last time, I think it’s fair-- but orcs are resilient as they are cruel, and Azog’s son, Bolg, will seek to avenge his father. They’ll send another pack after us sooner or later, and we need to be on the other side of Mirkwood when that happens.”
“We’ll set off first thing in the morning,” Gandalf says.
Bilbo nods. “Wonderful. Another thing, Gandalf. Mirkwood is infested with giant spiders, the woodland elves will try to kidnap us if we encounter them, and Radagast, Galadriel, and Elrond are all going to try and drag you off to do something about tombs in mountains and necromancers, but if you leave us, we will get lost. So if you would kindly arrange other transportation to get us as far as Long Lake, that would be immensely appreciated.”
Gandalf eyes Bilbo with naked judgment. “You know about the eagles.”
“Yes, you have used them to get us past the forest in almost every loop where we made any progress.”
“What was the first time like?” Kili asks, looking about as young as he is. It’s Fili and Kili on watch, and Bilbo can’t sleep. To him, it’s been decades since the last time they did this, with the trolls, but for them it’s been a week or so at most. Kili clarifies, “Not the first loop, I mean. The original.”
What a loaded question.
“It was awful,” he tells him. He’s a storyteller at heart, but he’s already written the damn book. He explained it to them once before, a time they were supposed to remember. It feels like unnecessary salt on an unhealing wound to have to tell it again, and to Fili and Kili no less.
But Fili asks, “What happened?” And he sounds so young when he says it and there’s a part of Bilbo, a terrible part, maybe some part of him influenced by the Ring, that wants them to know that this is the oldest he has ever heard their voices.
“You both died,” he says, “Thorin too. It was--” he has to collect himself. “Smaug is awake in that mountain, and he razed Laketown to ashes the first time. A bargeman named Bard killed him with a black arrow, but everyone who survived of Laketown came to Erebor seeking aid, and Thorin wouldn’t give it.” Both boys almost cry out how unlike Thorin it sounds to shut out those that need aid, right on the heels of a time when he needed that aid more than anyone, and Bilbo hasn’t even told them how Thorin gave his word! But he stops them. “Dragon sickness is upon that gold, and it held Thorin fast against the idea of parting with even a bit of it. I had to steal the Arkenstone so they could use it to barter with him.”
“You stole the Arkenstone!?” both boys shout.
“Keep your voices down,” Bilbo hisses. “There’ll be orcs on us by morning with that racket.”
“But you really did?” Kili repeats.
“Yes,” Bilbo says. “And I’d do it again. Thorin was not himself. He tried to throw me off a wall for it too,” he chuckles flippantly. “But, anyways, that doesn’t matter, an orcish army--”
“Doesn’t matter!?” Thorin shouts, storming out from the underbrush, and startling everyone present. “What do you mean I threw you off a wall?”
Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, and King Under the Mountain, is nothing if not proud, is nothing if not honorable, and is nothing if not loyal. While he had initially been peeing, and then prying, he cannot sit by and let his good name be slandered by this hobbit-- time-traveler or not!
“Well, hello, Thorin,” Bilbo greets him, looking entirely unimpressed. “Care to discuss your experience in previous timelines?”
“I would not throw you off a wall,” Thorin huffs.
“You were eavesdropping; you heard me.” Bilbo’s eyebrow quirks. “I stole the Arkenstone.”
“Because I was out of my mind.”
“Even more reason you would throw me off a wall then, hm?”
“I wouldn’t kill you over it! It’s a precious stone, but not more precious than a life.”
“It wouldn’t have killed me,” Bilbo says, trying very, very hard to defuse this whole thing, because they really shouldn’t be shouting on night watch. “You gave me a mithril shirt. It would have protected my organs, at least.”
Thorin blanches. Bone-white in an instant. Bilbo wonders if he has missed something about that shirt. Gandalf was always squirrely about it too. Never did tell Bilbo what the whole fuss was. Fili and Kili also pale, but after a minute start laughing. Full-bellied and jolly as anything. He’s seen them laugh less hard at their own jokes.
“We were married?” Thorin whispers.
“You threw your husband off a wall!” Fili hollers.
“We were what!?” There’s no way. How could they have been married? Moreover, when did they get married? And then Bilbo thinks back. Bofur had sent him a letter some time ago (or some time from now) saying he’d gotten married. He said she’d given him the finest smithwork she could afford, and he had accepted her suit, and the courtship was brief but perfect, and--
And, oh great biscuits and whey. The mithril shirt was a marriage proposal.
“We were… married,” he echoes. How could he have known!? Damned dwarves and their damned strange customs! First they come uninvited to his house, eat all his food, drag him out on the best and worst adventure of his life, apparently marry him off, and then send him home a grieving widower, only to get wrapped up in it again thanks to some stupid Ring! And he doesn’t even get to keep the husband they married him off to, because he doesn’t remember! In summary, Bilbo sighs, “I hate all you dwarves.”
Fili and Kili are still laughing, and Kili gives him a mock-salute by way of answer.
Thorin is still trying to grasp, “We were married…”
Bilbo almost gets to walk back to his bedroll, but Thorin chases after him. When they’re out of earshot of his nephews, he grabs Bilbo’s arm, stopping him in his tracks. “Did we stay married?” he asks.
For a moment, Bilbo considers if Thorin Oakenshield is stupid. He has mentioned several times now, in this loop even, that Thorin died. Maybe he came too late to eavesdrop it from this story, but has he really been so out-of-sorts as to miss the multiple times he said it earlier!?
But Thorin is genuinely asking, jaw set firm against whatever answer may come. “You died,” Bilbo says. “The last thing Azog did was kill you.” There isn’t enough moonlight between the bushes they’re wading through to see how Thorin takes that, but by the weakened grip on Bilbo’s arm, not well. “Azog died, the orcish army was crippled for decades, and I never remarried,” he laughs, because what other option does he have? Either this is funny, or it’s horrifyingly tragic. Thorin loved him, in that timeline, and Bilbo never even knew it. Not for sixty years. And now he has Thorin back, and Thorin doesn’t have a memory of him beyond a few weeks of idle chat and companionship.
He extricates his arm from Thorin’s gentle grip. “I’ll be going back to bed now. Goodnight, Thorin.”
He waits a moment, but can only reasonably wait so long. He is tucked into his own bedroll when Thorin replies, “Goodnight, Bilbo.”
y’all knew that one was coming!! See you the day after tomorrow for more :D
(or, yanno, right now if you upgrade to paid and support my ability to eat <3)
Scream at me in the comments!! Nothing brings me more joy!!!
YOU, dear author, are a menace.
Yessss, I love this 10/10 my favourite part is thorin peeing and then prying, the alliteration tickled me haha