Hey guys!

This is my first fanfic, and it's probably really bad, but I thought this was a good idea, so...

This is a work in progress, and I probably won't be updating too regularly, so bear with me.

This work is unedited (but I'm pretty good at English) so any mistakes are mine and mine alone.

DISCLAIMER: Sadly, I am not a genius English Oxford professor named Tolkien, so the Hobbit is not mine.

When Bilbo awoke, everything was unfamiliar, except for the bearded face of Balin staring down at him. "Hello there, lad." He said softly. "That was a nasty knock you got there," he smiled at Bilbo warmly.

"What...happened?" Bilbo asked in a whisper. His head hurt and he felt a sharp pain in his side.

"How much do you remember, lad?" Balin asked him, using a damp cloth to mop up the bright red blood flowing steadily from the side of Bilbo's head.

The sight of his own blood scared the hobbit; he had thought he wasn't much hurt, but now he was afraid he may have hurt himself beyond repair.

Balin dabbed at his forehead again with the rag. "It's alright, lad. You're going to be right as rain in a week or two." He patted Bilbo's shoulder softly. "Do you remember anything?"

Thinking hard, Bilbo gave a difficult recount of their adventures. "Well...I remember all of you dwarves showing up at my house...and...you had a quest to...to...get back your treasure from a...a dragon."

"Good," Balin said. "Go on,"

"And...we got to a cave, and...the floor fell out...and we got caught by goblins. And...I wasn't there, because I had gotten lost...and Gollum told some riddles...and...and I f-found a ring. And then…" he sighed. "It's all so muddled...I can't remember...we were in a forest, with spiders...and...and…" he squinched his eyes shut tight as he tried to remember. The pain in his head was pounding now, washing over him like waves over the sand. At last he sighed, "I can't remember, Balin. I'm sorry."

Balin smiled, but he seemed worried. "It's alright, Bilbo. You get some sleep, now. Perhaps you'll remember more when you've rested awhile." He stood up and walked away with an anxious expression on his face.

As he left, the world sharpened for Bilbo. It was no longer a blur of colours, but defined shapes, steadily growing sharper.

He saw that he was sitting, propped up against a tree. A few feet away, the rest of the dwarves sat in a ring around a small fire, they were speaking softly in worried tones, and snuck glances at the hobbit when they thought he couldn't see.

I wonder how badly I've been hurt. Bilbo wondered, but his head throbbed and he didn't want to think about it too much.

His body had gone numb. All that he could feel was the awful pain in his head. He felt as if there was no ground, nothing solid beneath him. The world was going fuzzy again, just large blobs of colour. He thought he could hear an eagle calling somewhere far away, but his mind was so muddled that he found that the easiest thing was to just close his eyes and block out the world.

When he opened his eyes again, his head felt worse, he couldn't feel his legs, and all the dwarves were crowded around him, looking down at him nervously.

His vision was blurred, but he could tell that he was lying down now, and there was an awful lot of red around him, underneath him even over him. He wondered if he had a red blanket over him, but when he touched it, it was warm, wet and sticky.

"He's waking up," said a voice (Bilbo thought it was Dori's.)

A dark-haired dwarf appeared in Bilbo's field of vision, but the figure was so fuzzy that Bilbo couldn't identify him until he spoke. "Master Baggins," Thorin said, worry tinging his voice. "How do you feel?"

Bilbo tried to speak in proper sentences, but all that came out was fractured words, enough for the dwarves to understand. "Head...hurts….can't feel...legs and arms…...am...am I….am I...dying?"

Another damp cloth was applied to the hobbit's head, in a desperate attempt to wipe away the blood.

Thorin looked at the grim faces of the other dwarves before answering the hobbit's question. "You've lost a lot of blood today, Bilbo." He said, his voice wavering slightly.

This answer was not satisfactory for Bilbo, and he asked again, "Am...I...dying?" His voice was hoarse, but the fear of death made him feel stronger, as if his weak heart was pumping defiantly, fighting his fate.

Thorin sighed, and, as if the sentence pained him to utter, said, "I think maybe, yes."

Bilbo closed his eyes, and nodded slowly. He felt dizzy, and lightheaded, and almost wished he could die right now. Instead, he decided to ask what exactly had happened.

"It was the dragon," Fili said. "He threw you."

Thorin nodded sadly. "When you went into the mountain the second time, the dragon woke. He caught you, Bilbo, and he tossed you against the wall. That's how you got the injury."

Bilbo suddenly let out a frenzy of coughing, the coughs came from nowhere, and they were breathy and wheezy. As he coughed, a new, sharp pang of pain accompanied by the metallic taste of blood filled his throat. He could hear the dwarves' worried questions, and felt someone's hands grasping his shoulders, but his vision had suddenly gone so fuzzy that he couldn't see anything, and he slipped off into unconsciousness, afraid of dying.

When he awoke next, the pain was gone altogether. He found it odd, because it couldn't have been too much time since he last woke up and felt so awful. Once he had realized this, he noticed the sounds that filled the air.

It was crying, the sounds of twelve sobbing dwarves, and a slow realisation of terror flushed upon him.

I'm...he couldn't get the word out, but luckily he didn't have to, because at that moment, Ori, dear sweet little Ori whispered to his older brother:

"I can't believe he's dead,"