Disclaimer: The Hobbit isn't mine. Pft. What did you expect? :\
...
i
He had seen little of gold since Erebor. How funny it all was—to one day have everything, and, within a flash of fire, nothing at all?
One day—a mountain of gold, glory—the greatest kingdom in the world. A proud line of blood running from Durin to Thrór to Thráin. To Thorin. The proud line of blood, running like the rivers of gold within the veins or Erebor.
And the river, never winding, never breaking, would push and pulse and surge, crumbling the soil before it, burning it to death, so that none stood in the way. How funny. That it would be stopped by fire, and perhaps so that it would rise in a tattered fog of nothing into the air. Only to drift and fade. Nothing to nothing. And nothing more.
How to defy those odds?
How to see, once more, the pale and gleaming gold, locked away in the home rightfully his?—and his people's?
Gold, the beautiful and terrible thing that blazed like fire, within the deep and dark. Smeared with Durin's blood.
...
ii
The fire was red.
...
iii
Erebor!—Erebor!—home, at last! The corpse of the dragon, lying beside it, would trouble them no more. Erebor!—cracked open and gleaming, its contents bare to his eyes. As if the sun had landed upon the earth, glowing, into his hands, his fists full of gold.
Gold.
And suddenly, life had achieved its purpose.
...
iv
And then there was nothing but gold. Gold. Gold. All the gold come back, bitter and sweet, rough and cold and gleaming between his roughened fingers. How he had yearned for the arched and vaulted ceilings that soared above, the treasure sparkling before him now—
His family's destruction.
His family's madness.
His family's downfall.
The thing that drove them into the sky—
—And back into the earth, where all dwarves belonged.
...
v
The gold belonged to the line of Durin. Suddenly, quantity had become his everything, his nothing.
"Loyalty.
"Honor.
A Willing Heart."
And the warmth of it used to flare in his chest, a bloom of wine and ale.
But here was gold. And it was cold.
"I can ask no more than that."
...
vi
I have fallen down dungeons deep. And caverns old.
...
vii
The spiral going down. It is an enchanting sight.
...
viii
And suddenly they are fighting again. Bifur and Bofur and Gandalf and Bilbo. And it snaps his mind into the present, as he charges into battle again. Once more, he has everything to lose. But this time, he has nothing to gain.
And it is chaos and blood and like fighting for Mordor again, fighting for what was rightfully his—
Rightfully.
His.
And then time stops, because it is the present and there is nothing but the blood and echoes of Mordor, echoes of firedrake and the descent into madness. Thrór's throes of madness amongst the pale, enchanted gold.
It is his own fault.
He realizes that I have already fallen.
And he realizes this much as well—
It was not Smaug who felled us first.
...
ix
But it still doesn't strike him, not so much. Because he is in the thicket of flesh and death, and the deep, heavy timbre of a song is strangely sounding in his head, blurring the battle into a fierce clamor for reasons.
Like why he is fighting.
And why he is losing.
History repeats itself, as he finds himself suddenly about to be run through, and this time, there is no Oakenshield to save him.
...
x
And it meets his flesh, and he cries out though he feels nothing. Because his flesh, his sister-sons are bleeding and staked through before him, the tips of the weapons just barely brushing his own chest. And he sees only the way they are still, then, the way their lives are shivering their way out of their bodies.
And then they are facing him, and he screams. And the head of Thrór is flashing before his eyes again, and he is helpless, again.
The next moment, they are in his arms, and he sees the fear in their eyes, fear of death, and they will never have the chance to grow as old as he, and their lives, everything they ever had, are spent—
And he is scared, too. And their eyes stare at him, large and pleading, spangled with stars, and their gazes become more and more like glass. His nephews, who, only yesterday, were alive and warm and laughing, and, only two yesterdays more, were smaller, lower than his knee, wondering at a world with the same moist and open eyes.
His sister-sons are dying, and, he thinks, they are too young to die; and Kíli, Kíli will die beardless, and Fíli has been working up all the way to this day, to his death...
And they pass in his arms, though they are still warm. Their blood spills cold onto his armor; their willing hearts burst and halt and stop beating.
And he can only murmur to them, though they are long gone, the laughter smote to ash, as he is left with nothing again, nothing but gold.
It is unfair.
And it is his fault.
Because no gold is worth this. Not even all the gold in Erebor.
...
PT: I was feeling sentimental. Feedback would be loved; they mean to me a lot more than a slew of favorites. And aside from that, I've just pulled out of a writing slump, so I must again bring up my eternal plea for constructive criticism.(By the way, the switch to present tense in the middle is intentional.) It's the only way I could ever be happy with my writing. Hope you enjoyed.