Ring Shenanigans Chapter 5
Spoiler: Thorin, out of breath, holding any forged item he can get his hands on: "how many times do we gotta teach you this lesson old man"
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And then Bilbo is out of breath at the edge of the goblin caves.
He sits on the ground and stares at his feet. There is a funny part of his brain saying the left one should be gone from the calf down. There shouldn’t be a foot there. It was definitely gone a few seconds ago. Bilbo would almost certainly fall, off balance due to his lack of a left foot, if he tried to stand. The afternoon was always warm before, but now it feels cold. Why is it so cold now? He was cold before, but that’s because he had been stripped mostly naked and deprived of a good portion of both his skin and blood. He has the luxuries of all three, plus a comfortably warm afternoon, on his side now. Why is he cold? If he tries to stand, will the phantom leg support him?
There’s rustling in the undergrowth several yards ahead, and Bilbo awaits the second coming of death. He isn’t sure if his hands would willingly cooperate to throw the Ring right now. Part of him wants very badly to put it on. To hide. Everything might be much easier if he puts on the ring. In fact, everything would certainly be much easier if he did. If only his hands would cooperate, he would put on the Ring and hide from death, just this once-- he has to be allowed to hide from it at least once. That has to be a permission he’s been granted otherwise why has he done all this? What is the point of a timeloop if you can’t save yourself from both a lifetime of lonely misery and from death?
But there is no strength in Bilbo’s phantom left leg, no energy in his hands, and so he remains sitting on the ground as the underbrush parts on fur and violence.
“Bilbo!” It’s Thorin. The fur had been his coat. The violence Thorin’s own. He’s calling Bilbo’s name again.
And Bilbo looks up at him, the only movement he feels capable of despite the growing grounding in time and space. Coming up around him is Balin, and Dwalin, and Ori, and Bifur, and Gloin and Oin and Bombur and Fili and Kili and Bofur and Dori and Nori and Gandalf and they all tower over him and Bilbo has never felt so happy maybe in all his life.
He laughs.
While the dwarves have every intention of coddling him as well as a dwarf can do so, Bilbo slips on the Ring and runs off to kill the orcs before they can be caught up in a fight again. They cry after him, some cursing and some entreating. It doesn’t take long because the orcs are never expecting to be the ones caught unawares when they have good intelligence that the dwarven company is running from the goblins, having only just recently escaped. This time, Bilbo kills the wargs too, so there’s nobody to run back and inform Bolg that something went wrong. A simple mistake, but one that could have saved him quite a bit of pain. He won’t make it again.
When he removes the Ring in the midst of the dwarves, who are still searching the underbrush for him, they are all pissed.
“Master Baggins,” Dwalin says seriously, “if you run off like that again, we will break your legs to prevent you.” Fili nudges his ribs. He amends, “We will not break your legs, but we will,” he surveys the group, “tie you up?” This also doesn’t land well, beings as anyone who was around and alive before the loop was reset thinks anyone in the company being tied up might make them throw up.
Bilbo merely scoffs. “Master Dwalin, you forget I’ve done this,” he counts to himself, “twenty times now. If I don’t kill that orc pack, they gain on us before I can get you all up to speed, and Thorin dies fighting Azog.”
“Every time?” Gandalf presses.
Nodding, Bilbo says, “Unless I try and fight Azog, yes, every time.”
Something in that makes a shadow flicker across Thorin’s face. Not anger, introspection. It’s a rare look on him. Bilbo does his best not to stare, drinking it all in for just a moment instead and then turning to Bofur, who says, “Bilbo, let us help.”
“What?”
“Help,” Kili enunciates. “Four-letter word. Means to provide assistance--”
“I know what it means!” Bilbo chuckles. “Just… how?”
Balin smiles, paternal and warm. Bilbo remembers that, some time ago, or perhaps some time from now, Balin reveals that he had a son who died to dragonfire. “At the least, fourteen heads are better than one.”
The first thing they do is make camp. Bilbo desperately wants to get more distance from Mordor, but reasonably there’s never been an attack here after Azog is dead. It is just paranoia, just the phantom pain as the exposed flesh of his cheek hits dirt, as his legs is punctured and severed and removed by warg teeth, as cold air pries inwards and rends the flesh further apart—
“Explain it again?” Gloin asks. When a beat becomes too long and it’s clear Bilbo has no idea where they are in conversation, Gloin repeats, “The part about Mirkwood.”
Right. Yes. “If Gandalf is not with us when we go through Mirkwood, we become lost, are attacked by giant spiders, and then taken prisoner by the elves of the Woodland Realm, who do not want us to wake Smaug.”
“Invariably?” Nori clarifies.
“Invariably,” Bilbo says. “But if we never meet Beorn or Legolas, then Azog or Bolg— who will be up on Ravenrock commanding the orc army— overpower Thorin, or me, or both of us— whoever fights them— and one of us dies.”
“So we must meet both of them,” Oin deduces, nodding sagely.
Ori says, “So Gandalf, just don’t leave us in Mirkwood.”
This request seems to satisfy Gandalf, who chuckles and nods along.
“Except Gandalf always leaves us before Mirkwood to run some wizardly errand or other,” Bilbo explains. “You always tell us it is of the utmost importance, and you’ll meet us at the Lonely Mountain.”
“Do I?” Gandalf asks.
With a shrug, Bilbo says, “You do. After Thorin has been overtaken by dragon sickness and is refusing common sense. It’s through you that I was able to parlay with Thranduil and Bard to exchange the Arkenstone for Thorin’s sanity.” A chuckle ripples through the company, even for Thorin. How long has it been since Bilbo heard Thorin laugh? It feels like an age. Bilbo finds himself smiling too and, for a moment, the phantom pain disappears.
It is the first watch, and Bilbo insisted on taking it. He doesn’t think he can sleep, no matter how badly he wants to. Moreover, he’s terrified of what he’ll find behind his eyelids when he shuts them.
Thorin has insisted on taking this watch with Bilbo, which made the rest of the company— who had all insisted quite heavily, before, that Bilbo rest— back off. He hasn’t said much of anything though. Mostly, he’s stared at the sky. If Thorin were religious, Bilbo might mistake the look in his eyes for prayer. It is a perfectly clear night, this loop, unlike several of the previous where the sky was clouded with smoke or else Bilbo was whisked away or too busy otherwise to see it. After the chaos that ended the prior loop, everything feels so still now, so calm. It makes his left leg itch where it should be gone.
No. Not ‘should be’ gone. Was gone. Important distinction. Bilbo thinks his leg should remain attached.
As if drawn by the thoughts, Thorin’s gaze leaves the stars and falls upon Bilbo instead. Bilbo does not comment on it. He meets that gaze evenly and then, after a long moment of continued silence, he looks up at the sky to try and see whatever it was Thorin saw up there. Without any lantern light or late-night teas shedding light as a cat sheds fur from the windows of shire neighbors, the sky is a watercolor of light, glowing even where stars are too faint to be their own distinct pinpricks. What do the stars look like in Erebor? When dwarves peer out from their great stone entryways, when those entryways are unbarred to visitors and even a foolish hobbit who has never ventured far from the shire could stand at those gates and look up, what would they see? Would it be a watercolor like this? Or perhaps the Lonely Mountain is a cloudy place, and the sky is a damp muslin held aloft above them? Bilbo never had a chance to look up when he was there before. That sixteenth loop, he had all the time in the world, or so it seemed, why did he never look up then?
Such a simple answer. Thorin never did, and so Bilbo was never curious.
“Don’t do that,” Thorin whispers suddenly. Bilbo’s head drops and he looks at Thorin, somewhat confused. “Never—” Thorin swallows thickly, “Never put yourself in that sort of situation again.”
And it doesn’t take a master thinker to know what he’s getting at. “With the orcs,” he still says, even though it feels cruel to check. There comes a slow nod. Has Thorin been gathering his courage to say this? It’s a little funny, but more than that it’s sad. “Thorin, you hired me to sneak into a dragon’s lair. I’ll have to be in harm’s way sometime or other.”
“It’s not the same!” Thorin hisses, voice coming out strung-out and tight. They may be outside the clearing where the campfire lay in embers, but there is firelight in Thorin’s eyes. “You won’t…” Thorin can’t look him in the eye anymore when he says, “you won’t die again.”
What a dwarven way to say you care. “How can that be your decision?” Bilbo asks, smiling a little.
Thorin stands firm. “I won’t allow it,” he says, truly a king here as much as he was in the Blue Mountains, as much as he will be in Erebor. “I won’t watch you die again.”
“So you’ll die first?”
There is no hesitation. “Yes.”
But that’s exactly the last thing Bilbo wanted to hear. “No,” he says, and the ferocity with which he says it makes Thorin’s spine snap straight. “No, Thorin, that is worse. Do you see how that’s worse?” It is very clear, from Thorin’s stupid, stubborn face, that he does not see. “I lived sixty years without you,” Bilbo says. “I have seen you die half a dozen times now. I can’t just watch you die anymore, I can’t.” Trying to be gentler, he adds, “Not if I can do something about it.”
Because that is the difference between them now. Bilbo can always do something about it. Beyond status and race and home and time, that is the difference between them that matters right now. Bilbo can change things. He has to change things. As many loops as it takes, he will keep the whole company of Thorin Oakenshield alive, he will help them retake Erebor, their home, and then he will destroy the One Ring before his nephew has a chance to be born, much less throw away his life trying to destroy a stupid piece of possessed jewelry.
“Then this will be your last loop.” Thorin says slowly. Bilbo blinks, rendered speechlees. Has this stupid, wonderful dwarven fool heard nothing he just said? But Thorin speaks with certainty, with not just self-assurance, but reassurance, “I will ensure this is your last loop. Just as you can’t watch me suffer anymore, neither can I watch you suffer—”
“Thorin, don’t.” Bilbo’s voice has gone hoarse. He is desperately holding in the feelings that he couldn’t express on the ice, the first time. “Please, don’t make these promises to me. You’re not— you don’t.” There’s no need to finish that statement. Thorin knows what is missing. Bilbo knows that this Thorin will never feel for him what he did when it was that first time, when Bilbo himself couldn’t have named the feeling.
But maybe a person is not so easily changed, and maybe feelings stretch across time, however jagged the line of it may be. Thorin starts to remove his armor. He drops his furs and then removes the brigandine armor underneath, leaving him in just a loose shirt. Then he removes the forged guards over his knees, and then starts to undo the ties for his leather wristwraps, revealing chainmail vambraces.
It takes entirely too long for Bilbo to interject with, “What are you doing?”
Thorin does not pause in his armor removal as he explains, as if this were the most simple, clear-cut thing in the world, “I don’t have a mithril shirt yet, but my armor is the finest dwarven smithwork I can offer—”
“No!” Bilbo yelps, too loud and too quick. Quieter, “You still need your armor!”
This doesn’t stop Thorin either. “I am a more capable fighter,” he says.
This might have been true several loops ago, but Bilbo has been able to handle himself just fine since before these loops even began. “I can take out a pack of orcs now. Try again.” He may have skated by on luck and a magic ring several times, but now he has skills in his own right. Besides, armor would truly only slow him down. Hobbits and disappearing acts are for stealth, and brigandine tinkles like beadwork when not tight-fitting.
Thorin sits in the pile of his armor for several moments, thinking. Good. Bilbo lets him think. Dwarven proposal traditions be damned, he is not letting Thorin walk through the rest of this quest un-armored.
A conclusion is visibly reached for Thorin when he, thank the Valar, begins to don his armor once more. Fully clothed again, he removes his right leather gauntlet, and then the chainmail vambrace underneath. “Then, accept this, at least,” Thorin says softly, “For now.”
And Bilbo doesn’t want to be rude and reject a marriage proposal, which he truly wants to accept, twice. So he says, “Gladly,” and slides the vambrace over his wrist. It is, of course, too big, and Thorin has to help him fasten it securely. While it had fit over Thorin’s palm and stretched to just past his wrist, it easily covers Bilbo’s whole forearm. But Bilbo finds he likes it better than any mithril shirt given by a half-mad king.
Besides, knowing Thorin, he’ll end up giving Bilbo that same mithril shirt anyway.
a nice sweet chapter for y’all <3 u deserve it (esp if ur keeping up with the gut-wrenching shit going on with cinnamon muffins rn lol)
I hope everyone is having a good day! I re-did the plot outline for HTGAWM yesterday, so writing today has gone much smoother <3
Also, for all y’all that have been loving this hobbit fic, I have another!! The Hobbit, but the Multiverse Does the Macarena is another silly goofy Hobbit fic (sillier and goofier, in fact, than this one) and I’ll start posting it on the same schedule as Ring Shenanigans once Ring Shenanigans is over.
Please lemme know what other fandoms you like, or which of my original works is ur fav!! It helps me post things you guys actually wanna read lol.
As always, Scream at me in the comments! Nothing brings me more joy!!!