A/N: The second in a series of six fics focusing on Thorin and his sister sons, expect a mix of book and film-verse The series is called When Love Is Given Freely, and can also be found on A03
Keeping Faith
When pestilence strikes the Blue Mountains, Thorin is hard pressed to keep faith,and show his nephews how to do the same . . .
How does one keep faith when every day despair takes root deeper in the heart?
"The count?"
"Thirty more last night," Balin answered gravely.
Thorin did not look up from his desk, forehead leaning wearily against steepled fingers. The House of Healing would soon run out of beds.
"Yesterday, I saw the baker's dwarflings were carried in..."
"One did not make it to see the morn. I fear the other may follow soon."
Callous fingers threaded together and clenched tightly until his knuckles cracked. Only five babes had been born to their people this year; already three of them were lost. He did not let his thoughts stray to his nephews.
If his voice was rougher around his next words, Balin had the grace to ignore it, "Any word from Dís?"
"Milady's raven returned with this," Balin handed him a piece of rolled parchment inked in a beautiful hand, "She had already moved on to the next town by the time she received your note, it seems."
Thorin sighed, reading over his sister's neat script. The towns of men in the foothills of the Blue Mountains were angry and wary of the dwarven travellers and merchants coming out of the mountains. They shut their doors, and shuttered their windows against his people, blaming them for the pestilence spreading through the land with the onset of winter. Though there were many among his race who decried that the sickness plaguing them had started in the towns of men.
None could be certain, and little did its origins matter now, when all they sought was an end to it. Its course was swift and merciless, claiming first the old, before wearing down the strong; but the panic started rising only when it began taking their children. It was a blow they could not afford, neither in spirit nor in numbers, for too seldom were there celebrations of new births among his people in these dark days.
"She tries to sell our wares further down the valley. The men there will be more amenable to trade, she thinks," They won't be- He doesn't say. "I should not have allowed her to go."
"You could not have kept her here," Balin shook his head with a knowing sigh.
"The road is especially dangerous this time of year."
"Dwalin is with her, you yourself assigned him to her guard."
"She should have no need to travel, selling wares like a common peddler."
"You should have no need to wrought horseshoes and fix pots like a common blacksmith. Our purses are all tight these days, laddie."
"But I alone can make enough to support us. I would not let Fíli and Kíli want for anything. They are my nephews."
"Aye, but they are her sons first."
Very few there were with the gall to chasten Thorin Oakenshield, fewer still were those he would not strike down for offering such insult. But it was difficult to remember a time when his old tutor had not been present to give his pride a dampening nudge, and his words never failed to help Thorin see truths too long overlooked.
"You are right to remind me," Thorin sighed, a small chagrined smile tugging the corners of his lips, "And I am griping..."
"Aye, laddie. That you are," Balin chuckled, patting his shoulder with an old familiarity, "For someone who never wanted to be a father, you have certainly taken to it like a mattock to stone."
The swell of pride in his chest was warm and secret. Perhaps it was for the best that Dís be far until the worst was over. She would be safer from this scourge, and return to her sons safe and hale. He sobered once more.
"Do we have enough volunteers to deliver rations?"
"Yes, we gained three more this morn. Might that convince you to stop exposing yourself?" Balin looked at him pointedly, arms folded across his chest. The old dwarf had proposed a systematic quarantine to keep the sick from infecting the healthy, but those who could not leave their homes would need food and water delivered by those brave enough to risk exposure.
"I would not ask anything of others I would not be willing to do myself, Balin."
The old dwarf sighed, something proud in his words, "You are named well, Amtêkurdu[1]."
"And you are getting soft, Bahyrumùrad[2]," he grumbled so that he would not smile. "Were we sent an inventory of the herbs the healers need replenished?"
"Yes, the lists were-"
"Uncle!"
Thorin looked up sharply to find his youngest nephew bounding into his study, grin wide on his chubby face. Fíli was not far behind, looking a tad harried as if he had chased his brother all the way here.
"Fíli, Kíli, I told you to say inside," Thorin stood, hands planted firmly on his desk as he stared the pair down unamused.
At his the unexpectedly stern greeting, Kíli skid to a halt, keeping his balance only because he grasped onto Balin's long robe.
"But Uncle..." He trailed off with a slight cough, brow furrowing as if it only then realizing he had disobeyed.
"He would not be stayed-" Fíli panted, looking quickly between his brother, his uncle, and the floor, "I thought I should not let him come alone..."
Thorin's gaze saw the amused sparkle in Balin's eyes, and finally softened. Memories curled like wisps of smoke in forgotten corners of his mind; the impossibility of getting his own siblings to obey their elders when it mattered most, their laughter echoing in great halls now lost to the wyrm.
"You did right, Fíli."
The look of grateful relief on his nephew's face should not have made his chest tighten so. There was a giggling presence tugging at his tunic suddenly.
"Uncle Thorin! Uncle Thorin! Will you take us sledding today?"
"Where are your gloves Kíli?" he evaded the question expertly, ignoring Balin's teasing grin.
"Here," Fíli pulled them from his coat pocket, and tugged his brother's hands free of their uncle's clothes. Grumbling as he helped Kíli pull them on, "If you had not run out the door so fast-"
"And your scarves?" Thorin pulled their hoods to reveal bare little necks as they squirmed and giggled, "We cannot go sledding, because you're not properly dressed. Besides, there is not enough snow on the mountain."
"But Uncle!" Kíli looked devastated by the news. "What if it has snowed since you last looked? It could have, right?"
Fíli shrugged unhelpfully, patting his little brother on the head, "I told you, Kíli."
"We shall die of boredom!" Kíli wailed.
"Do not say such things," Thorin gruffed, watching little hands cover Kíli's mouth as his eyes widened comically, "You forget what today is."
"Lettering day," Fíli nodded confident and sure, clearing his throat with a smile when Thorin pat his head.
"Yes, and that can be done inside," he eyed the younger dwarfling with an arched brow. Kíli sighed in resignation.
"Yes, Uncle."
"I can take care of the rest here, Thorin," Balin offered.
Thorin nodded his thanks, taking small hands in his own as he lead his nephews away, "Perhaps we will do twice the usual amount of letters today, so we do not forget your Uncle's instructions next time, hmm?"
"What?!" Kíli moaned.
"Kíli!" Fíli's hiss promised retribution later.
They rode through the square briskly, Fíli and Kíli still small enough to share his pony. He hastened to get them away from the stir of people still brave or healthy enough to mill about the shops. But the empty quiet of the streets was noticeable, and the sorrowed strain of those they met was not easily masked.
"What's that?" Kíli tugged at his sleeve, pointing at two shaggy mules pulling a creaking cart, its cargo a set of long stone boxes.
Thorin clicked his tongue urging the pony faster and did not answer.
"Look, Kíli-" Fíli distracted him, for which he was grateful, "They've begun to set out the yule blocks."
"Oh! Uncle! Uncle Thorin! May we get one, please!"
"There are many weeks still until Solstice," He did not want to stop if he could help it. They had been out in the open air too long already.
"Oh pleaseee!" Kíli wriggled behind him in a fit that he knew would see no end.
"Hush," His tone was harsher than he'd meant it to be, but he pulled their ride to a stop, dismounting with a firm warning, "Stay here."
He paid the old dwarf more than he asked for having troubled to open his shop at all. Half expecting to turn and find his nephews gone, he was pleased to see the two remained where he had left them, staring at the darkened windows of the shop across the road.
"Uncle Thorin," Fíli's brow was furrowed, his voice low with something like suspicion, "Why is the bakery closed so early?"
"Many shops are closed today, Fíli," Thorin remounted carefully, "Most everyone is staying inside as I've asked them to, except for two rebellious little dwarflings. Now home, no more stops, or questions."
Their home was a solitary den on a small ridge overlooking much of the city. It offered the vestiges of Durin's line little grandeur but much valued privacy. The hours crept by slowly while he set the dwarflings to their studies and started the chores.
There was a time in distant memory, when servants and attendants stood at his beck and call. Cooking meals, and clearing plates, dusting suites and halls full of fine furniture and treasures. Laundering his richly tailored clothes so that they appeared clean and folded in his drawers and wardrobes, as if by magic.
Now Thorin washed his own shirts, scrubbed and rinsed his nephew's tiny tunics, carefully pressed and ironed his sister's robes. He wondered on darker days if Erebor was but a beauteous vision he once dreamed, or if perhaps this life was a long nightmare from which he had yet to wake.
He joined the children once more when the chores were finished and dinner was roasting over the fire. Scrolls littered his half of the table as he poured over half finished designs his sister left for him to decipher, separating what they had the means to make and what might best sell. At some point he realized he could no longer hear Fíli's quill.
"Fíli your list of runes will not write themselves. Finish your assignment," Thorin scolded lightly without so much as glancing up from his work. Soon the dwarflings would begin their lessons at his forge, and Thorin would have to complete several commissions before there would be time to-
"Yes, Uncle."
Something in his nephew's voice made him look up. Ever the dutiful child, Fíli picked up his quill once more and set it to the paper. His strokes were too slow and lethargic to keep the ink from blotting and ruining the sheet. Yet, he did not seem to notice.
Beside him Kíli's dark head rested on the table, wispy locks splayed over the wood. His cheek was pressed into the frightening scritches of black ink covering the page. Kíli's best imitation of his brother's work was still a far cry from legible. The boundless energy that would have had him chattering or fidgeting at any other time completely absent.
"You two are astonishingly quiet," Thorin frowned suspiciously, "Should I expect a tally from one of the peddlers at the market for damaged goods?"
Fíli continued as if he had not heard. Though the fire had been stoked high at Kíli's incessant complaints about the chill, it was not so hot as to warrant his nephew's flushed skin. The boy rubbed at his eyes tiredly, squinting for too long at the page before finding the line he left off.
"Fíli?" unease crept silently into his heart when the boy raised dull weary eyes to him, blinking several times but not quite focusing. He was at his nephew's side in the next instant, large hand cupping a heated cheek, "Fíli you burn with fever. Why did you not say anything before?"
"I only thought I should finish..." The end of his answer was lost in an uncharacteristic slur.
"Nevermind that now. How long have you been feeling ill?" he smoothed a thumb over his hot brow.
"I . . . maybe a bit after midday meal? Kíli- Kíli wasn't feeling well either . . ."
His youngest nephew's face was completely hidden by a curtain of dark hair. He brushed it aside, alarmed at the sweaty dampness of his hair before revealing the deep flush of the child's face. Kíli's skin was scalding to his touch.
"Kíli? Kíli-" Thorin shook the dwarfling but he only mewled in complaint, rubbing an ink-stained fist across his eyes. "Kíli, I need you to wake up."
He shook more firmly until dark eyes slitted open, and dry lips mumbled, "M'head hurts."
Icy tendrils of fear chilled the blood in his veins.
"Uncle Thorin-" Fíli's voice shook, his eyes suddenly large and frightened, "He was warm this morning, and- and dizzy. I didn't say, I thought it was just... I'm sorry, I didn't think. I'm sorry. Is he going- Will Kíli- I'm sorry-"
"Hush, Fíli. You've done nothing wrong," Thorin pulled him close and kissed his brow.
He should have known better than to try keeping his eldest in the dark. The dwarfling he named his heir was sharp as any blade he had ever forged, never failing to peer through all the veils he built around their innocence; and more often than not aiding him in keeping Kíli unawares of the hardships he tried to protect them both from.
"Are you yet feeling strong enough to help me with your brother?"
"Yes," Fíli nodded firm, little face flushed but his eyes more alert than earlier.
"Draw us a cool bath 's a good lad," His hand gave the back of his hot neck an encouraging squeeze.
Gathering Kíli in his arms, he sifted through the mess on the table for a blank sheet. His runes were tilted with haste, and some lines seemed to squirm away under the shaking of his quill, but it was legible. Tied and sealed, he attached the roll of paper to their swiftest raven. Slipping a small red stone around its neck to mark the urgency of his message, he nudged the bird out the window to find its destination.
Balin,
Add my residence to the quarantine list.
And please, send for Dís posthaste.
~T.O.
To be continued...
[1] Amtêkurdu - "To steel (strengthen) hearts" - my headcanon for Thorin's true name. Dwarves reveal their true name to few outside of family. I like to think the use of them is a sign of trust and intimacy.
[2] Bahyrumùrad - "Wise soul" - my headcanon for Balin's true name. I have chosen the film's interpretation of Balin as an elder statesman.