Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author Note: There's some sibling incest referenced - Kili and Fili are brothers who are also in a relationship with one another. Also mention of regular drug use. Part Eighteen in the Violet Nights series.

FIVE TIMES TO HEAL

1. Fili and/or Kili

Oin would know those shouts anywhere, he heard them often enough. For two people who well knew how to quickly and silently get lost in a crowd, Kili and Fili could make one hell of a racket. They were making one now as they argued outside his flat. Oin had been treating Kili and Fili's bumps and cuts since they were nippers, though still old enough to get each other into trouble. They hadn't stopped since.

The older Durin generation weren't much better. Oin had been regularly tending to Thorin and Dis for years. And he remembered what their father had been like too, of course he did; Oin had been the Durin family doctor for decades now. Thrain had been focused and sturdy with his eye always on matching his father's footsteps. He'd been army born and bred that one, though very much a family man too. Frerin had been just like him. Oin had a long memory and when people weren't talking at a decent volume, which was all too often in his opinion, he had a good many remembrances to fall back on.

Kili and Fili had always been a couple of limbs of mischief, never short of trouble or the Durin temper. Oin had liked Kili and Fili's grandparents; he'd danced with their grandmother at Balin's wedding reception. She'd been a grand lady, always with a twinkle in her eye and steel in her spine. On one memorable occasion, she'd danced barefoot at Erebor. She'd thrown her shoes at someone, hadn't she? After they'd said something particularly worthy of a projectile? Oin frowned, actually that had happened more than once, hadn't it? The throwing of something across that room? Hmmm. Anyway, he had younger Durins to attend to now.

"Oin!"

Kili stormed in, dragging Fili in behind him. Fili looked distinctly green around the gills which immediately got Oin's attention. He got Fili sat down and began a thorough examination which Fili submitted to with the air of someone who'd done this sort of thing far too often. He wasn't the only one. Kili fussed and muttered beside his brother until Oin fixed him with a look that regularly quietened the most annoying of patients. Kili twitched and stopped gesturing but didn't stop talking.

Oin turned back to Fili "If I didn't have to ask you questions, I'd turn my hearing aid off."

Fili laughed and Kili protested while Oin got back to work. Hmm, Fili was looking a little swollen and sick, a bit tender around the stomach and in some pain, but nothing that'd warrant a hospital visit.

"What did you eat today?"

Fili's brow furrowed. "Toast and cereal for breakfast, then Dover sole and chips for lunch."

"And those roasted nuts in town," Kili reminded him.

Oin hmmmed. "Well, it looks like a spot of food poisoning. Nothing to call the cavalry about. I can give you something to help chase it off."

Fili eyeballed his brother impressively. "I told you."

Kili raised his eyebrows. "So we didn't find a puncture mark, you still could have been drugged."

"I would have noticed-."

"You didn't last time!"

Oin pointedly switched his hearing aid off.

2. Angelique, Isaac, and Camille

Oin's work was mainly made up of housecalls. He wasn't one for needing an office and since his regular patients were mostly housebound it worked out well. It kept him moving, which was good for him too. He was more than happy to make this particular housecall.

Angelique smiled as she ushered him in, offering him a cup of tea which he accepted of course. She didn't look especially strained or worried which told Oin a great deal. You could tell a lot about the health of a child by the attitude of the parents. There was little Camille all tucked up in her baby basket, dressed in pale yellow, her little hands and feet kicking and grasping the air. Oin bent over the basket and let her grab one of his fingers. She burbled at him loudly and Oin clucked his tongue at her in reply.

"She's got her father's strength already."

Angelique smiled, handing him a cup of tea in one of her homemade mugs. It was one of her hobbies, a couple of local shops them whenever she built up enough of a stock and Bilbo used a few in his café too. They were nice mugs, with grooves running around them just right for fingers. Angelique told him that she'd gotten Isaac to help her recently, his little hands smoothing through the clay. His first steps into the family business.

Speaking of which. "Where's the patient?"

Angelique led him into her son's bedroom where he was lying down under the covers, flushed and glassy-eyed. Clearly suffering a fever, he looked understandably miserable, stuck inside one room. Oin could remember a similar look on Frerin's face when he'd gotten chicken pox. He'd been sure that he was missing out on all kinds of adventures and insisted that he should be allowed to go outside, because he always felt better out there. His mother, and Oin, had decided otherwise.

Oin gently examined Isaac, chatting to him quietly and raising a smile or two. "Well, I'm afraid its bed rest for you until that temperature goes down, soldier."

Angelique nodded. "If you stay in bed for as long as Dr Oin says you must, then Mr Baggins will make you one of his hot chocolates."

Isaac didn't manage to sit up at that but he did open his eyes a little wider. "And a cookie?"

"Rocky Road," confirmed Angelique.

If the lad could think about food without turning green, then he hadn't sunk too low in his illness. That was good to see. Oin never let his child patients realise that he was worried or scared for them. When children were sick, they needed him to be all-knowing and unruffled.

When Isaac didn't feel any better after a few days, Oin prescribed some medicine and told Bombur that if it didn't bring about any positive change, then Isaac would need to be admitted to hospital. None of them wanted that – hospital meant official forms and a computer presence, it meant showing Smaug their soft underbelly. He'd made no overtures towards either of Bombur's children yet but Oin knew it was only a matter of time. That bastard had no boundaries; everyone was fair game to him. Oin could still remember stitching up a young teenage Fili who'd been bottled during a fight that had sprawled out across a street one evening, a fight apparently set off just to injure Fili. Oin wouldn't soon forget how Fili had shaken that night.

Oin had been a doctor for many years; he knew what he could and couldn't do for his patients. But still, whenever one of the Erebor family needed to visit a hospital, Oin felt more than a pang of failure.

3. Neve

She was waiting at their usual Tuesday table – third from the right near the back. Next month, their usual table would be a completely different one. Neve would decide on its location, she'd always loved puzzles. Now she was waiting for Oin with a couple of glasses of white wine. Oin muttered under his breath as he heaved himself down into the chair opposite hers. His joints were creaking a little more every day, a fact that she definitely would have picked up on.

Her hair was as dark as ever, cut straight above her shoulders with an equally straight fringe. She'd worn her hair exactly like that on their wedding day too.

He handed her an inconsequential white envelope which she tucked away inside her smart tailored jacket, navy blue had always suited her well. She'd always looked younger than her years, something that she'd achieved without the proverbial nip and tuck. Oin chuckled because she was inspecting him just as openly. They were good for each other's egos.

He ordered the bloody steak and chips; she ordered the lamb and mint dish. They both enjoyed the wine.

They talked about her family, about her sister who was living in Naples and her elderly aunt who was in a care home now. Neve talked at a lovely volume, why couldn't everybody else? Her job was going well; she'd been involved in a couple of very difficult operations recently which had both eventually been successful. Her cousin was curating a new museum exhibition that she thought he'd like. He ruminated on it and decided that he might take his nephew along to see it. It sounded like the sort of thing Gimli would enjoy.

They didn't talk about Erebor or any Durins. Bringing that up would only ruin lunch. Thinking about Thorin always gave Neve indigestion.

The fact that one of her family's companies regularly did business with Thranduil gave Thorin more than indigestion; when he'd found out he'd had some choice words to say about Neve and why she'd married Oin in the first place. Both Oin and Gloin had fallen out with Thorin over that, they'd both swung for him too. Eventually Thorin had apologised, he hadn't meant it but his humiliation had helped. It wasn't as though Neve had ever met Thranduil, he was just someone who did business with her parents and who did so remotely. Thranduil hadn't stepped outside his gated community in years.

Her wedding ring caught the light, making Oin smile. The legal separation they'd gotten years ago really had been the best thing all round.

"Malcolm asked me out on a date," she revealed, raising an amused, almost challenging eyebrow.

Oin snorted. Malcolm dyed his hair and played squash, Oin could hardly see Malcolm keeping up with Neve. Neve's smile widened a fraction as she finished off her lunch. Her fingers were markedly stiffer than they had been last week and one of her legs was jittering slightly, a bad day perhaps? No wonder she'd asked for another delivery of marijuana, Nori was always happy to oblige Oin's request. He knew that Neve would always pay upfront; in fact she usually gave Nori a little extra. She liked Nori and donated heavily whenever she saw him busking.

Smaug hadn't fared well when he'd tried to use Neve against the Durins. A couple of his minions had shadowed her until she'd had a restraining order authorised against them thanks to the photographs she'd taken of their hovering presence and the license plates that she'd continually recognised and remembered. Neve's family were well-connected enough to be practically off-limits too, though Smaug had attempted to interfere with some stocks and shares and he'd even attempted a corporate takeover of one of her family's companies but that had backfired spectacularly. It still made Oin smirk, thinking about that.

Smaug probably liked to think that he was responsible for the breakdown of Oin and Neve's marriage. But he'd arrived too late to the party to claim that crown. True, he'd made things worse, but Oin and Neve had already made their choice by then. A doctor and a surgeon, both living very crammed lives, both devoted to very different families - their marriage hadn't survived that lack of oxygen but it hadn't ended with an awful messy bang. They were better than that, and there'd been no need for a divorce either, there still wasn't. Why would they spend all that money? A divorce wasn't right for either of them anyway.

Oin always enjoyed Neve's company; he missed talking to her when she was away at medical conferences. She still sent gifts and cards to Gloin, Freya, and Gimli on birthdays and Christmas. Neve still had the perfect reason to ward off irritating suitors until she found one that suited her while Oin hadn't wanted to date anyone in years. This was what was right for both of them.

4. Nori

Cynthia was playing her violin again. When she saw Oin, she darted her eyes to the left. He dropped a bit of change into her open violin case and disappeared down the nearby sidestreet. Nori was crouched by someone, a man with long dark hair streaked with red, there was an equally scruffy dog sat beside him whining. Nori greeted Oin with a nod.

"It's a deep one."

With some effort, Oin knelt down to take a look at the man's arm wound, yes, he was definitely going to need stitches. Oin unpacked what he needed from the travel kit that he brought with him whenever Nori left an urgent message at the flats. Nori held his friend's arm steady and reeled off any allergies that could be a problem before Oin numbed the arm and began some quick but very neat stitching. His hands were a hairsbreadth slower than they'd once been but his stitches were tight and precise even as he muttered about needing better light. This wasn't his first time administering stitches to one of Nori's homeless friends, crouched on the ground and out of view of the public, trying to be as quick as possible just in case.

He didn't ask where the wound had come from; he didn't ask why Nori hadn't taken his friend to the free GP surgery that was attached to the homeless healthcare day centre. He wasn't stupid.

He closed the wound and began covering the line of stitches in gauze and then tougher protective bandage strips. The man moaned and shifted but he didn't resist. Good, the ones who resisted always made things worse for themselves.

"Be careful with it, keep it dry."

Nori nodded and then dove down to begin rolling up his friend's trouser leg. "This is back again too."

Oin shook his head at the revealed rash. "No fever?"

"Not so far."

Oin handed him a tube of over-the-counter cream. It'd worked before. "If this doesn't clear it up, leave the flyer under my door."

Nori nodded, concentrating on his friend who looked miserable. Hardly surprising, he was probably remembering what a nuisance that rash had been last time – Samson, that was his name. Feeling pleased with himself, Oin tucked some money into Nori's coat pocket, keeping the movement as quick and light as possible. Nori tensed but calmed just as rapidly.

Oin had stayed too long already, there was never enough time, was there? Dori and Ori would be pleased to know their brother had been spotted though.

As he hurried off, Oin nodded towards Nori's coat pocket. "Neve's gratitude."

5. Elrond

He was only doing this because Belladonna had asked him to. And when Belladonna asked, she made sure you knew that what she was asking was important and that you really shouldn't refuse. Thorin was often toppled by her; everyone at Erebor adored her for that and for her forthrightness and her ability to infuriate Bilbo. Still, it was cruel of her to use all of that against Oin, especially on this occasion.

Bilbo had given him a pitying look but hadn't tried to help, because Elrond was actually a friend of his. Well, it took all sorts. There was the proprietor of Rivendell, waiting outside Violet Nights' backdoor. He was stood on one of the back yard's paving slabs, staring off somewhere towards the horizon. He was wearing a rich red coat over what was probably a tailored suit, he didn't look ill but he had asked to see Oin in a medical capacity. It was strange, seeing as a well-to-do family like the Halfs could certainly afford private medical care. But Elrond was going to pay well, so here was Oin, his large kit bag in his hand and his hearing aid turned up.

Elrond turned, one of his poncey eyebrows raised as he looked Oin up and down. No, Oin had not bothered to change out of his old patched tweed jacket with its tea-stained sleeves and yes, he was still wearing his brown corduroy trousers which had a hole at the right knee and a lot of fraying around the ankles. He was comfortable; it was what he needed, wasn't it? Especially when working.

He and Elrond stared at each other for a moment. One or two of the others might have tried to listen in but Bilbo was probably guarding against that. He was touchy about privacy.

Elrond inclined his head "Doctor-patient confidentiality?"

Oin's eyebrows drew down sharply, announcing his displeasure at Elrond's doubt. Oin was old not senile, he was still a doctor and so he upheld what he'd always upheld, thank you. Elrond nodded at his expression and quietly began to explain.

Oin opened his bag, his face professionally blank. Despite everything, he was ready to help. Of course he was.

-the end