Chapter Text
“Look at all these hobbits bustling about!”
Kíli shares his observation to the rest of the company with great enthusiasm, as if the dwarves—all thirteen of them—were not standing smack in the middle of the commotion of hobbits rushing around the settlement of Bywater with carts and baskets and flowers and what-not, as if some great occurrence was afoot.
The halflings give them a wide breadth, some eyeing them with wary, distrustful looks, but none stop to ask their business. Perhaps they are all simply too busy to bother.
The last time Thorin Oakenshield had travelled into the Shire it had been under the cover of night, and he had left it much too early to truly witness much of its inhabitants and their way of life. In fact, most of his knowledge of hobbits stems from his encounters with but a single, albeit very special one.
He knows they like the comforts of a simple life. Of good tiled earth, of warm hearths and comfy chairs and flowering gardens.
And, if all the carts of tables, food and ale are any indication, a good old celebration certainly wasn’t amiss.
“They seem to be preparing for quite a party, don’t they!” Bofur pipes up from atop his pony, moving it aside to let another, wider cart pass down the road, greeting the courier with a tip of his hat.
“You don’t suppose they will be amiable to letting us join them? For a fair share, of course,” Dori asks and is met with many murmurs of agreement.
“It is not why we’re here,” Balin reminds them, and is met with just as many murmurs of begrudging agreement.
“Yes, yes. Should we press on then?” Dwalin grumbles. “We left the ponies in some stables around here last time.”
“By the Green Dragon Inn, yes,” Ori chimes in. “But surely we will have rooms in Bag End?”
“Oh absolutely! Bilbo wouldn’t leave us out and cold! We best leave the ponies though—I don’t recall anywhere else to keep them close by,” Fili reasons.
“We would do best not to hastily draw such conclusions.”
Thorin’s cautioning remark has them snapping to attention, although his youngest sister-son scoffs loudly at him.
“Don’t be such a worry-wart, my King!” Kíli urges with an easy smile. “Bilbo is our friend. He still cares for us very much—cares for you still, when all is said and done! It is all there in his letters! And is that not why we’re here in the first place? So that you can ask his return to Erebor?”
“I do not pretend to know another’s feelings in such matters,” Thorin warns, but his severity is softened by the sparking sliver of hope that has kept a fiery glow alight in his core since they began their travels west and towards this undertaking.
The company exchange knowing smiles and murmurs amongst each other, all of which he elects to ignore in favour of leading them to the vaguely familiar Green Dragon Inn.
The stable hand that greets them seems only mildly shocked at their appearance – and their grand number of fourteen ponies – as word of their arrival must already have travelled by hustling hobbit feet. He lets Glóin know to pay him handsomely for his troubles.
They repack and take their drinks of water, readying for the final stretch that will take them to Hobbiton, and to their dearly missed companion. To Bag-End. To Bilbo.
Thorin hasn’t quite yet made an agreement within the confinement of his own head regarding what he should say to their former burglar once he stands on his doorsteps for a second time. He has, of course, played through many possible scenarios in his head through their many weeks of travel, either through slow days passed atop his steed or by the campfire at night in the meagre comforts of his bedroll.
His indecision bothers him. He had confessed his ills and wrongdoings to the hobbit at what he had thought would be his deathbed, only to have fate sweep him from death’s grasp and put him back into the mess he had made of the world in his greed and sickness. But his confessions surely must not have been sufficient to truly earn him forgiveness. For, in the end, Bilbo had still left. While the letters he had exchanged, with both Thorin and the others of the Company, spoke of nothing but friendship and forgiveness, truth is often well concealed upon expressionless parchment.
And, the feelings Thorin has found his heart to be nurturing long after Bilbo’s departure might not be welcome in the complications now shrouding their already tarnished friendship.
He has dared to let himself imagine that it has, as Bilbo had written, all been forgiven. He has imagined arriving at Bag-End, letting his company ahead of him to share laughter and loud greetings with their esteemed friend, watching their joy from afar until Bilbo would turn to him, his face alight with happiness and relief and the same longing that Thorin has lived with for far, far too long. He has imagined meeting him on his porch in the evening to share a pipe and many good and perilous memories from their adventures; they would relish in their satisfaction while recounting the greater deeds they had accomplished, argue their own retellings and perspectives, laugh at the particularly good ones, and easily fall into a comfortable silence with the thrum of mirth still rumbling in their chests. Thorin’s confession of his affections would come then, rolling smooth as waves of poetry in the night as moonlight danced upon his intended’s face, upon the brow where he would dare place his own should his proposal be well received.
In other scenarios, there are more tears, more anger and remorse and feelings that have yet not been allowed to run their course. But in the relief that follows, the conclusion is much the same: Bilbo’s hands tenderly grasping his own and plans made for their departure to Erebor before summer’s end.
Sometimes, in the later hours of the night when his mind is less guarded and his heart more daring, he has even imagined storming up the road to Bag-End, to do away with all pretence and decorum and take Bilbo into his arms at his doorstep, to let a first kiss of yearning and passion speak for him—and for it to be returned, for it cannot possibly be that he was the only one to have fallen so thoroughly and so deeply on their journey and surely Bilbo Baggins, the fire of his forge and keeper of his heart, wants and cares for him just as profoundly in turn.
It is such wishful thinking, Thorin knows. And he knows he will lack the courage to attempt it, if he even has the right to make such a bold approach after all that’s happened between them.
They are very close now. Hobbiton is but a short walk from Bywater, and in but an hour or so Thorin will know the outcome of this venture.
It is, in a way, very much like standing on the threshold of the secret door on Durin’s day—at the end of a long journey, at the conclusion of a chapter that leads to the continuing story. The story that in the end, after its dangers and darkness and perils, led to the rebuilding of Erebor. Of his home. The home that his heart, in its deepest, most earnest chambers, yearns for Bilbo to share with him.
How he could ever have let him go without knowing that, Thorin will regret until his last days.
But he is here now to make right of this wrong. That the most trusted dwarves in his life have come with him lends him the strength and the courage to see this task through. They all long for the return of their burglar to their midst, should he be amiable to agree, and if Thorin’s longing runs much deeper than so… well. The rest is up to Bilbo Baggins to decide.
“Should I call for the innkeeper to help take your baggage to your rooms?”
“That won’t be necessary, laddie,” Balin tells the stable hand, who while wary of them still portrays the standard of hobbit hospitality. “We shall hopefully not be needing any rooms tonight.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” the stable hand shares with them, causing a few dwarves to twitch curiously.
“How so?” Dori asks on their behalf.
“Well, because of the party, of course!” the lad explains. “There’ll be folks travelling from all the four Farthings, I dare say! Some are staying with extended family I believe, but with all the Brandybuck clan coming down from Brandy Hall I dare say there won’t be more than a room or two free tonight. Might be a tight squeeze for the lot of you!”
“We’ve made do with less,” Nori mumbles to his companions’ reminiscent nods, but the stable hand doesn’t hear him, for the innkeeper himself appears then with an exacerbated squeak as he sees the lot of dwarves there.
“Oh, Burchard Button! Pray you haven’t promised this lot any rooms, for there aren’t any more to be had!”
“Not to worry, Mister Burrows! I was just doing some informing, and they say they’re not staying—just the ponies, see.”
“Oh goodness, that’s all well then,” the innkeeper, Mister Burrows, sighs his relief, looking thoroughly overrun with the party-business and the work it is bringing him. “So where is the lot of you headed? If you don’t mind me asking, Master Dwarf.”
“A simple visit,” Balin smiles diplomatically, and the hobbits seem more at ease around them then.
“Well it’s certainly the right time for it! As long as you’re not making no trouble, summer is certainly the best time to be travelling though. Our rooms are fully booked but do come by for a hot meal and good ale! We have the best brews to be had in the West Farthing, I can vouch for that.”
The innkeeper sells his business with a gentle assuredness and enough pride to match a dwarven merchant. They smile and nod amiably, but all quietly hope to enjoy food and drink within the cosy walls of a familiar hobbit-hole come evening.
Mister Burrows turns to the young stable hand then. “Now if you’re quite done seeing to those ponies, the last party from Buckland just arrived and I need more capable hands to carry their luggage! They seem to have brought a whole smial with them.”
“I’ll be there in a moment, Mister Burrows!”
“See that you are! Gracious, I will have sprouted many a-grey hairs before this is all over. I will be very happy, I will, once tonight has passed and this wedding-business is all over and done with! Then again, I suppose it’s been a long time since we saw a mister Baggins get married in Hobbiton. They do throw the most generous parties.”
“Right you are, Mister Burrows. I wish I were lucky enough to attend!”
“Agreed. But now, do come and attend to the guests from Buckland! They’ve been waiting a good long while already, and I won’t stand for a single smear on the name of this establishment! And good-day, Master Dwarfs!”
And then the hobbits are gone just as quickly as they had appeared, unknowingly leaving thirteen dwarves with blank, stony expressions and equally stone-sinking feelings in their stomachs as they all come to realise that the hustle and bustle of hobbits they have witnessed today are the wedding preparations of one Mister Baggins of Hobbiton.