I can't bring myself to forgive her for leaving.
Whether or not she was actually to blame is not my decision to make. But as I sit here and listen to our daughter cry, I can't help the anger that rises in me. I want her to be here. I want her to not be dead. And the fact that she fails to heed my wishes, as ever she did, angers me.
There is nothing I can do to forget her smile, her laugh, her scent. It's still as though she could walk into the room at any moment and scold me for worrying so much. She never did grow tired of scolding me. It was as though I could do nothing right. At the same time, she made me feel as though I could do nothing wrong.
Thorin's train of thought was broken when his daughter's crying escalated into a scream for attention. With a sigh, he set his quill aside and pushed himself away from the desk. The infant was hardly longer than his forearm, and her thick, dark curls nearly obscured her face. That was probably what was upsetting her. Thorin leaned over the crib and brushed the dark locks aside with a gentle finger. She had her mother's hazel eyes. The dwarf's heart ached as he looked at the little girl, and wondered for the hundredth time that day, what would be different if Billa were still alive.
The infant calmed a little, now that her hair was no longer all over her face, but she had her father's attention and seemed unwilling to let him go. So rather than tolerating Thorin's retreat to his desk, she screamed at him again until he returned, and grasped his finger in two tiny hands, gnawing on his ink-stained finger with wet, harmless gums.
Thorin gave in and sat in the char beside her crib, the chair that was a little too small for him, because it had been built for Billa. Bifur had crafted the chair specifically to ease Billa's night-time aches, and she had loved it dearly. Slept in it almost every night that Thorin would let her. It had struck him as unnatural to sleep sitting up, and some deeply-rooted part of his heart had twanged uncomfortably every time he saw her dozing, chin on her chest, one arm draped over her burgeoning belly. Perhaps it had been jealousy that had prompted him to insist she sleep in the bed where he could hold her properly. Perhaps not. Either way, he wished he'd insisted more.
As the baby girl had her fill of gumming his finger into submission, she started to drift off again, hazel eyes fluttering as she fought sleep. Thorin's lips curved slightly in a faint, sad smile. So many things about his daughter reminded him of the wife he'd never see again. The grief was intense, but this... having a piece of her that depended on him so utterly... this kept it at bay. He had, like many of his kind, lost his senses with the death of his beloved. But there were too many things that depended on his strength for him to take the freedom of insanity at its alluring word, and leave it all behind. Fili was struggling with his own form of grief, and Kili had never really been cut out to rule. Balin was preparing to leave for Moria, and Dis was busy keeping order in Ered Luin. And now his daughter, this tiny, helpless infant. At first, they hadn't been sure she would live. As strong as she was, lacking one hobbit had made them question if a hobbit/dwarf halfblood would be able to outlive her delicate mother. The answer, it seemed, was yes.
"You're strong, aren't you?" he whispered to the sleeping infant. "My little princess."