Characters: Gloin and Gimli centric, the rest of the fellowship are also present.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. I don't get money from it. Sue me and I'll laugh. And hide.
Warnings: AU. Deals with character death, grief, angst.
Summary: Gloin and Gimli find out about Balin.
Author's Note: I do not think that I can do a better, equal or even passable imitation of Tolkien. This is just for fun. Mildly AU- Gloin joined the fellowship alongside his son, the rest of the fellowship is the same. I've played with the Chamber scene in Moria, dancing between Movie and Book. Please R&R!
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As Gimli sprinted into the darkened room, his father close on his tail, the rest of the fellowship heard his cries of anguish. Filing in behind the Grey Wizard, they fill into a respectful silence when they saw the white tomb.
"Here lies Balin. Son of Fundin. Lord of Moria." Recited Gandalf sombrely. "He is dead then. It's as I feared." Taking his hat off, he looked on sadly as Gimli laid his head against the stone.
Gloin sank to his knees, his eyes far away as his son moaned his grief, floating out of his despair only as Gandalf picked up a familiar book. "Ori's book." He murmured, almost to himself, remembering the company leaving Erebor, filled with hope and confidence in the strength of their numbers and the rightness of their cause. All, to a dwarf, sure that they would succeed. In the face of such certainty, how could the dwarrows of the Lonely Mountain to otherwise than believe in their victory? Even when no news came for years, they believed in the strength of their men... Sang songs of their inevitable, glorious return, even as their bodies were hewn and defiled in this ancient tomb of ancient days, days that would never be again.
Thinking of those songs, he remembered those that had sung them loudest... Of Dwalin, beard now almost as white as his brothers', roaring of Balin's unmatched skill in axe and words, making him the perfect Lord of Moria. Nori, chanting increasingly more obscene and bawdy chants about his sweet baby brother, bedding every dwarrowdam in Middle Earth once he came back, gloriously victorious.
Dori... "Dori bound it himself... A gift, for his brother..." Whether he said it to explain the depth of horror and agony in this room to those not of the Mountain, who could not otherwise understand his grief, or if he said it only to force those terrible words- their terrible message of loss- out of him, so they would no longer plague him alone, he did not know. But he did see that look of sudden realisation on their faces, the faces of this Fellowship Gloin had dragged into Balin's home... his tomb. The realisation of who those withered bones had been in life, the bones that had clutched the book so long after his death.
Gloin let himself fall back, resting his weight on his ankles as the full and unbearable truth broke upon him. "They are all gone. All of them. Balin. Ori. Loni, Nali..." He almost howled the last words out... "MY BROTHER!"
As Gandalf turned the cracked and aged pages, he began to read out the scraps of old news newly inflicted, the fates of those doomed heroes as had been recorded. "Floi was killed by an arrow..." "Being the tenth of novembre, Balin, Lord of Moria, fell in the Dimrill Dale. He went alone..." "We cannot get out..." "They have taken the Bridge. And the Second Hall. Frar and Loni and Nali fell there..." "The Watcher in the Water took Oin..." "They are coming..."
Reeling from the blow of his brothers' end, to be consumed by so hellish a beast and never to be laid into stone as he should have been, and the memory of the tenth of novembre that year, being the day Dwalin had to be carried home after drinking to much ale in honour of, "My Brother, Lord of Moria, too busy being Lord-like to get drunk with 'is footsoldiers!", along with the realisation that Ori, little, sweet, gentle Ori, had been alive until the end, no merciful death from behind by a foul Orc with no bone nor sinew of honour in his body, but to die in a brutal and utterly hopeless battle, surrounded ever more by the death of his friends and kin- Gloin erupted in grief and rage, roaring, "FOUL ACCURSED BEASTS OF FELL BIRTH AND FOUL PURPOSE! They'll see no mercy from ME- I! I, the kin of the slain, I shall REND them, I shall TEAR them asunder and make them KNOW FEAR! TERROR! DEATH! As they have never known, it shall fall upon YOU, foul creatures of darkness and hate! You will know pain and then you will know NOTHING! BARUK KHAZAD! KHAZAD AI-MENU!"
Just as the two men were warily trying to think of a way to quieten the loud dwarf before his mourning cries could give them away, Frodo's soft voice spoke sadly. "I met Balin once. He came to visit Bilbo, when I was very young. I remember, he was very kind." He seemed to fail at words then, looking to Gandalf helplessly.
"I have rarely met kinder souls than those three blessed dwarfs, Balin the Wise, Oin the Healer and Ori the Scribe. As brave as they were, it is their gentleness that will ever be recalled by their people with great fondness."
"Balin taught me to read." Growled Gimli, now caressing the handle of the old axe that had been lain on the tomb- Balin's axe. "Ori helped me to write my runes straighter. Oin..." At this, Gloin's eyes shut in pain. "he taught me herbs, and healed my every scrape as a lad."
The pale elf's gentle voice joined the quiet eulogy. "I remember them, from your journey through Mirkwood. Balin, the Elder, white hair and clam words. Oin, the healer with the ear trumpet. And Ori- the youngest, was he not? Clad in hand knitted scarves?"
Shaking his head slightly, Gloin said, "Aye, his brother knitted everything he wore, but he wasn't the youngest, that was Kili, though you wouldn't think it to look at him. So confident and reckless he was, him and his brother. And it didn't save them. It never saves the young." As if of one mind, the two dwarfs, two men, elf and wizard looked over at the hobbits- just in time to see Peregrin Took's foolishness herald their presence to the menacing mines.
"Fool of a Took!"