Disclaimer: J.R.R. Tolkien, Sir Peter Jackson, Warner/New Line - they own it all
Warnings: Mentions of trauma, post-traumatic stress, implied/referenced self harm. Some spoilers for BotFA.
A/N: Cross-posted to AO3. A convoluted and hasty attempt to organise some thoughts and my own take on Shire AU in light of some major issues Thorin would most likely continue to have even when trying to settle into normality. Post-BotFA AU, with some Bilbo/Thorin.
"Thorin."
He can hear the gentle chiding in that loving tone, above the screech of wooden legs on a stone floor, and he tries to smile around his sharply thumping heart as he watches his hobbit move the chair from where it barricades the round green door.
"Sorry," he says, and means it, maybe.
The ritual repeats night after night, like it had done since the second first night he arrived at this quaint, quiet shire. When he had looked upon its tress and hills and bright blue lake, achingly peaceful and enviably simple, the closest he had come to serenity and could not bring himself to believe in it still. When Bilbo had shown him into his (their) room, and bid him goodnight with a kiss, and had been sound asleep while he had lain awake to every sound outside their smial. When Bilbo had awoken the next morning to a chair wedged against his hobbit door, and Thorin keeping sleepless watch by the hearth in the filter of the early morning light.
"Force of habit," he had said then; still says, now.
"You don't have to." Bilbo reasons. You shouldn't have to.
He cannot fault Bilbo for trying to help - not when he goes out of his way to tie all the legs of the chairs to the table, in the end, and Thorin stands for a long moment in the midnight pitch of the hallway, contemplating the impossibility of moving the entire dining set in the middle of the night without waking his hobbit.
Instead, he takes to sitting against the door, one hand around a fireplace poker, the other clutching the collar of his coat.
For the first time, he falls asleep on watch.
Comes to with a startled inhale at the touch of a small warm hand on his brow, staring up into wide green eyes that still shimmer in this dark before the dawn.
"Come to bed," Bilbo says. "You're freezing out here."
Thorin goes to bed, as he is told, but Bilbo knows better than to force him into a sleep when he is unprepared - open, vulnerable to the host of memories anyone else would have called nightmares.
Instead, his hobbit merely curls up against him and burrows his face in the crook of his shoulder, and mumbles sleepily something about 'marmalade' and 'bread rolls'.
Thorin keeps sleepless watch tonight, not on the round green wood of Bag End, but over the familiar weight pressed up by his side and the slow steady breaths ghosting across his skin.
It is bread rolls first. Basic but solid, browned crust and soft white, and he still remembers the bite of it, the bland sweetness, the comforting fullness in his belly that is almost too much, almost sickening after days of gnawing, hollowing hunger.
Bread is easy to find, even easier to hide, and he clears the crumbs from under his side of the pillow, picking them with care so he that does not drop any, does not miss any, does not waste.
Cheese is an indulgence. Jam, even more so. The Shire preserves are summer sweet and vibrant, so different from that of his childhood feasts, but overflowing with so much flavour that the first time he could not help but wolf down five slices in one sitting, his stomach had brought them all back up.
Bilbo keeps an eye on him nowadays, especially during second breakfast.
But it is an innocuous apple sweet, the last one that gets jostled out its basket and rolling into the coal pile by the stove, that brings things to light, and when Bilbo walks in on him picking through the trash for it - clean off most of the black dust and it'll be good as new - he can barely look up for the sudden shame surging through him.
Whatever he is expecting Bilbo to say, it certainly isn't "are you hungry?"
No, he wants to tell him, but the words stick like honey in his throat. Not anymore.
There is a whole pile of new apple sweets by his bedside when he wakes the next morning. He finishes one, slowly, carefully, and makes Bilbo keep the rest.
Few things cripple him more than headaches these days, and when he feels the inevitable build of it pushing at his temples and behind his eyes, he tries at least to give Bilbo a curt warning before shutting himself in the room and curling himself under the heavy weight of the blanket.
He is not unused to physical discomfort, though he wonders if that in itself is something to take pride in, so the debilitating nature of his headaches is at once confusing and frustrating.
Not just the pain, not always. Sometimes there is nausea, curling and acrid at the back of his throat, slithering over his tongue. Other times it is soft shuttered light or the smell of roasting that sends his head spinning so fast he loses himself between worlds. Once, though, the pain had been so bad he had lost control and wet himself.
Control. This robs him of it, the pain and the paralysis and the disconnect between his will and his actions. The feeling of his own mind turning against itself
-like the sickness-
-like dragon sickness-
When he's in this state, he snaps at anyone and anything - just like he had before - jerking awake from fits of sleep,jumping at every shadow that slithered wyrm-like across the himself away is one way to stop that from happening again - to stop his caustic words and violent outbursts, to stop from ever having to see that petrified look shadow the face of his love again.
Here, under the covers, it is dark and quiet enough to give him time and space to find the balance of how he is, where he is and in whose home (theirs), and who he is and who he wakes up to.
He wakes up, always, to Bilbo.
"Better?" Bilbo asks, and always waits for his answer, even if there are sheets to be changed, or meals to be prepared.
"Better," he says, and always tries to make that true.
The scar along his back is long and winding, stretching from shoulder blade to hip, and on cold nights, he can still feel the kiss of steel skidding along the ridge of his spine.
The scar in his side is ugly, a mass of healed flesh over a puncture wound that took weeks to stop oozing, and Oin had had to open it several times to remove blade rust and other debris that had been punched in on the blow.
His left leg bears smaller puncture marks, though not by enemy blades or arrows. Where the bone had been broken in two places and twisted beneath him, the healers had driven spikes into his leg and strapped them in straight alignment, and despite the indescribable pain of the procedure, he could walk on it, healed and stable, in several weeks.
No, the one that pains him the most sits high on his left shoulder, a punch of sword through muscle and bone that would have killed him if it had been any lower, if he had allowed it to stab into him where he knew it ought to have, if a small blur of curls and mithril had not thrown the Pale Orc's aim off and he had not jumped away in shock, utterly panicked at the thought of his hobbit at the hands of that monster.
Azog's blade had entered his shoulder, but Orcrist had found the truer mark.
Bilbo kisses it tonight, like he does every night. A soft fluttering touch of lips to still-sensitive flesh, as if memorizing the wound, tracing the evidence of how close they had come and every move of his tongue is a thanksgiving of what they have, still have, now.
Thorin sees it a little differently.
It is weakness, foolishness and his own faithlessness. It is giving up hope, giving into vengeance, chasing the need for pain because that's all he's known for far too long.
In his nightmares, the wound flares and a bolt buries itself in his heart. In waking, the wound throbs, sometimes, a dull pulsing ache that can go on for days and drive him to the point of wanting to try anything to make the ache stop.
He shudders, and Bilbo makes a shushing sound.
"You're stronger than this," he says, soft fingers tracing the scar contours.
And each night the words are repeated, Thorin thinks, maybe, he can believe them a little more.
Hobbits are tactile creatures, Bilbo had warned him as much the moment they stepped across the borders of Hobbiton. They are used to shaking hands, patting heads, thumping backs and big squeezing hugs - it's just the way we are.
Not too dissimilar to dwarves then, Thorin had thought. Perhaps, without the headbutting, and Bilbo had laughed when he said so, and he hadn't thought any more about it.
Telling, perhaps, that like so many things in his life, the worst things happen when he least expects them, when he is most unprepared. And because of - because of him, really, their first High Day market trip has become nothing less than a complete disaster.
Because this time, it isn't a handshake, or a friendly pat, or even a hug.
It is a hand at the back of his neck, as he is bending down to pick up the bags and his hair is fallen forward in his face. A brush across exposed skin by a foreign hand that is sudden as it is accidental.
It is unexpected. It is terrifying.
His fist swings up before he can even check himself, and there is a sudden loud cry of pain, followed by a feminine shriek of fear.
He stumbles back, world tilting, the roar of battle sounds in his head robbing breath from his lungs, and he is back there, again, in ice and rock and frozen ruins, held facedown on a frozen river by a clawed hand at his nape, waiting, waiting for the slice of blade through flesh and that mocking, grating, guttural laugh -
"Thorin!"
He is on his knees when he comes to, Bilbo crouched next to him, hand wrapped around his wrist. His vision clears, and there is a ruddy-cheeked hobbit sprawled in front of him, blood streaming from his nose, and a crowd around them, murmuring and gaping.
"Are you all right, Paladin?" Bilbo asks, gently, and the younger hobbit nods shakily.
"Just a little bump. No harm done, Bilbo," Paladin Took scrambles to his feet, his pretty fiancé clutching her handkerchief to his nose, and Thorin can see how hastily they retreat from him. "Sorry if I startled you, Master Dwarf."
The crowd parts, then closes in once more.
"You take him home, Bilbo," an older hobbit says from beside them, and there is ice forming behind his kindly words. "Get him some rest."
Home. The word cuts through the haze in his head, and he stumbles after Bilbo as he leads them out of the market, and his hand never leaves his wrist.
"Home," he murmurs to himself along the small winding path up to that round familiar door.
Bilbo turns to look back at him with a small smile. "Home."
And as much as he might think to not ever leave Bag End again, Bilbo drags him out the very next High Day back to the market, luring him with the promise of butter ale and reassurances of right here with you and the thought that maybe the best part about home is the part when one finds home in it.