Written to/inspired by Firedance - Bill Whelan.
Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep.
He dreams of fire, of smoke and ash. Hands twist themselves into the cool linen sheets but he cannot stop, the dream does not relent until the fire is so close to swallowing him whole. Burning homes and flames licking his feet as he climbs, desperately searching for a way that will bring him closer to the beast.
Where are his sons' sons that dare approach me?
The heat burns his lungs, surely he cannot breathe – surely he is taking his last steps now, as his feet pound on streets of wood and the flames are all around him, until the water beneath him is a Lake of Fire. He has seen this before, he has done this before – he must wake, of course he will wake, but he does not and his voice cries out in fear before he takes the arrow with shaking hands and stares at it for one last time.
I kill where I wish and none dare resist.
The dragon is before him, tail curving and crushing, leaving bent buildings in its wake, ready to be consumed by fire. Smaug taunts him, words punctured by screams of women and children and the cut off yells of men as they are burned alive trying to push their folk off into boats. Bard is in a fury, a red haze descends over his eyes as he sees more arrows do the same damage as a brush of a feather against these scales of tenfold shields.
The dragon's breath is death and Bard thrashes in his bed, he cannot hear his wife speaking softly to him, he cannot hear her whispers in his ear to "be still, my love," and "I am here, I am here, and He is not," for He is the dragon, He is Smaug and Bard will be burned to ashes in his bed while he dreams of speaking the last words his mouth will form to his arrow when they should have been to his children.
Arrow, black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you!
He speaks more but his dream does not tell him of his courage, it tells him instead of his wild fear as the arrow lets loose and flies to the bare patch near the beast's heart of fire, and Bard does not know if he succeeds. His dream is cruel enough to end with him fighting for air under the water, half covered by wood and bodies.
The sound of rain on the roof does not rouse him, and when his wife runs a cool cloth over his forehead he gasps and arches, seeing in his dreams that he is truly lost and the water is engulfing him, drowning him; he sees nothing.
And as soon as his eyes close for the last time, the dream taking him to his death, he is given life, new life breathed into him by warm lips softly pressing against his own, hands firmly holding his flailing arms, pinning him to the bed. How does she possess such strength? For a while he thinks – no, he is sure - this is the water swallowing him up again, but then her body rolls over and onto him and her tongue slips into his mouth, and suddenly his body is on fire all over again, his skin a raw nerve. Her hands are stroking his skin, softly touching his arms, his chest, and then lower still until he wakes and chokes on his breath. The cedar beams are above his head, the cream hangings surround the bed of oak. There is no dragon, there is no He, there is no fire but what is brewing within him, sparking and catching.
She pauses in her ministrations and again her mouth is at his ear and his eyes close,
"I am here, I am here, be still my love, be still," she says, and she is kissing him again.
He can taste her breath, the mint leaves that she chews before bed, the tea she must have drunk. She is the blood flowing through his body, and soon enough he is returning her kiss, fingers through the river of black lava that is her hair, running his hands down her naked back to cup her buttocks, groaning when she sighs in delight as the point of him slides against her. She pulls and he pushes, rising with her until he is seated on the duckdown mattress and she is above him, legs either side of him, her mouth stealing his growl of pleasure as her nails scrape down his chest, his back, his thighs. The warmth of her is inescapable; she is everywhere, her body takes him in until there is almost no room to move, he is held in so tightly.
He has never been woken from his dreams like this; there is no one to even tell of his dreams, no one to speak his harrowed thoughts to. He does not want to – no one wishes to hear that their King wakes in the dead of night gulping for air, skin shining with stale sweat. No child wishes to hear that their father could never have protected them against a dragon that breathed fire. No one wishes to know that it was the arrow, not he, that saved them from Smaug's burning breath. His arrow was blessed, forged from the true king under the Mountain, and if he can take credit for anything it will be that he has a good aim, true and lasting.
And now, buried in the depths of his wife, his mind clears and he is filled with a sense of relief that washes over him like her palms that are flat and hot on his chest.
With his relief comes action that springs from him as naturally as an arrow from a bow. His arms encircle her, his mouth captures her lips and now it is his strength driving them on. Her body sags against him, her cries muffled by his mouth until they fall back onto the mattress and he bends her leg at the knee, pushing himself deeper and deeper into the ocean of fire, his fingers splaying on her body then touching and searching, dipping lower and lower until she is quivering, coming apart like a seam on his coat.
There is nothing sweeter than the sound of this woman whispering his name over and over, as if it is a spell that will be cast. And when words of begging spill from her lips he bends his head to suckle at her breasts, thumb rolling over the tender skin between her legs, aching to give her the release that he so wishes to feel convulsing around him. When it comes, her body is rigid; her chestnut skin gleams with sweat and he catches her body as she falls back onto the pillows, unable to restrain himself any longer from plunging in until he has finally awoken from the depths of his dream to pour into her and rest his forehead to her shoulder with a shuddering sigh.
Later he lies tangled with his wife, sheets half off the bed. The air is hot and sticky, and the sweat on their bodies sucks them back together if one moves when the other does not. They speak together, of what he will never remember, but he knows that he falls asleep to the sound of her voice, lilting and foreign, murmuring stories that he doesn't understand and never will. But it does not matter, for the dream no longer comes and when he wakes at dawn again he moves towards her, mouth on every inch of her skin, worshipping at her shrine in a wordless show of gratitude.
.
.
.
A/N
Words in italics are directly from Tolkien's 'The Hobbit'.
I have left Bard's wife without a name; there are enough hints that it may be read as Anne from Kings & Sweetmeats, but if you wish it could be whoever you want.