saw, heard, knew
.
.
.
He ran. Through snow and sleet and wind and ice, he ran. All around him, battle raged. The bellowing of orcs as they raised their clubs and then brought them down in vicious sweeps had Bilbo flinching, and skittering nervously to the side. He clutched Sting, his palms wet with stress and fear, and his teeth chattered. His very bones quaked. A dwarf with long black hair gave a battle cry, and Bilbo ducked just in time to avoid the axe that came sailing over his head to impale a ghastly creature.
The dwarf gave a mad cackle. "Lad, you'd best watch where you're —" he cut off, blood dribbling over his lips.
Bilbo cried out in fear and ran faster, away from the dwarf-murderer, away from it all. The soles of his feet dug into rock as he clambered higher up the mountainside, racing for the summit. Stupidly, he yelled "Thorin!", afraid that he was too late; afraid that even if he got there in time that he'd be useless. The air was filled with the soft shlick of sword meeting sword meeting flesh.
And then he was there.
For a moment, all he saw was the blizzard raging. He raised a hand against the wind, and maybe against the truth. Was Thorin even alive? White obscured his vision, and he pressed forth, big, tough feet feeling the chill of the ground, and below that the indentations of rock and, below even that, the soft rumble of battle and fear.
Then Bilbo saw.
Azog, rising above the storm. Towering, with his teeth flashing in a sneer and his eyes wide with anger. Bilbo hunched lower, his fingers numb. He couldn't tell where he ended and where Sting began. He slitted his eyes against the cold.
Then Bilbo heard.
The noise Thorin made as Azog triumphed; as the King Under the Mountain lost.
The orc gave a snarl, and then Azog was falling though the surface of the frozen lake and he was gone, gone, gone, and Bilbo couldn't bring himself to care as he raced and tripped and gasped and found himself kneeling at Thorin's side, Sting abandoned at his feet, and pressing his numb hands to the King's side, with his eyes flicking up and down, up and down, searching for help or an escape — from the truth or from the summit, he knew not; perhaps it was both.
"B-Bilbo," Thorin gasped, drawing his lips back from his teeth, slightly yellowed from their journey. And then the dwarf was spewing sentimentality, his eyes soft and scared, but Bilbo wasn't listening — couldn't listen. All he could hear was the noise Thorin had made as steel ran through him.
It had to be a dream, because Thorin couldn't die.
But then. Then Bilbo knew.
The King Under the Mountain was dead. His body was cooling rapidly in the storm, despite Bilbo clutching his head in his lap and some part of his arm. When had Bilbo adopted such a position?
"Let me die instead," he whispered. "Bring him back. He can't die. He can't. Please — " The hobbit was praying now — to might-be gods and the Valar and Gandalf, and to anything that would listen, and then he couldn't hear what he was saying, just as he couldn't hear what Thorin's last words were —
And then Bilbo was sobbing, folding himself in half over Thorin's slack face, hands shaking. His mouth was open, and his heart was in his ears, louder than the snow and sleet and wind and ice. His eyes were burning from tears, and then he stopped folding himself over Thorin, because it wasn't working, so he threw his head back instead and howled.
It couldn't be true. It couldn't.
He wished desperately to go back in time — let Bilbo die instead, let Bilbo suffer torture and starvation and beatings, just don't be dead, Thorin!
"No," he moaned, patting his hands over Thorin. "No. No."
He didn't know how long he sat there. Too long.
But eventually, he moved.
Thorin couldn't lie in the snow. He didn't deserve to lie here, freezing, Bilbo thought. He felt sick at the sight of the glassy eyes and the mouth, open in death with spit gathering at the edges. Bilbo gave a soft cry of grief, and it was lost to the snow. He tugged at Thorin, at the body, and it was stiff, with the joints locked, and then suddenly Thorin unravelled, and the muscles relaxed. The neck rolled back and as Bilbo kept trying to pick him up Thorin pissed himself as his bladder released.
Because it wasn't Thorin. It was a dead body. And rigor mortis had set in.
Bilbo threw up.
Gave another sick sound.
Left.