A/N: From a friend's prompt...this is Thorin's vantage point, centering around his nephews' deaths. Major angst and tragedy and canon character death. Oh, the FEELS.
Disclaimer: if they were mine, do you think they'd be dead?
He does not remember when they fell.
Thorin is not certain if hates himself more for not remembering, for not feeling a sharper pain even than they did, or for letting this moment come to pass. He had sworn against it, even in his blackest moments. Even in the moments that brought them here.
He does not remember when they fell. He only knows that they have fallen, and that darkness is theirs and his, the only thing they still share.
If they are dead—and in the blood haze of battle and of pain (his pain, their pain, they will all be one soon) he fancies their spirits floating high and free, above the clamor and gore and agony, and he wonders how it was that he could build them, only for such breaking as this.
But he does not know that they are dead, only that they have fallen, and if they have fallen perhaps they can be saved, as he may be saved if—
But there is no chance for that. He has seen the bitter scrawl of mortality across a hundred faces that he has known and loved (but no such love as this, never his sistersons, never his sons—he had let himself call them such, and he let himself lose them-),and he knows this mortality for what it is as it shudders through his flesh.
He is dying, a king bleeding down into his country, and his heirs have fallen beside him, because that they were taught well—loyalty, as well as loss.
But he will not know that they are dead, not unless no mercy remains upon this earth.
Dwalin is beside him, with blood in his beard and sorrow on his face, heavy and hard as stone. Dwalin is speaking, words in the familiar rhythm of Khuzdul, and Thorin finds the rumble of his own language in the rough tones of his friend almost comforting—almost, but it is nearly over now—
For Dwalin says, "My king," and his voice is broken, and Thorin knows that his end is nigh indeed.
He does not know, now, if he is anyone's king. Or if he ever was.
(But he was their uncle, and they, the only sons he knew).
"We cannot leave you here," Dwalin says, and it is true, the company is protecting him and it is taxing. Thorin nods—a great effort, and close, very close to his last—but it is not Dwalin who raises him, rather, a great hulking shape that is more beast than man (but the eyes are great and kind).
So it is that he is borne away from the battle, and he might have slipped gently from the waking world, might have entered the Halls of Mandos with firm and measured steps—but from the height of the beast's arms he sees—
Sees that they are pale and they are broken, bloodied and so very small—together as they were from childhood—together as they fell—
And it is then that he knows that they are dead.
The cry tears itself from him, blood and flesh and bone rising at the injustice of it all, and darkness does not take him so much as it breaks him.
It is a wonder, hours later, that he even wakes.
His wounds are grievous. He wonders if hours are too long to count, now. His last allotted moments have nearly passed as he slept—an ugly, fitful, restless state of unconsciousness that had none of the sweetness of slumber.
They have laid him in a place too kingly for his sins, too kind in face of his crimes against his people.
Dwalin joins him again. Some part of Thorin knows that the rest are outside—the din of battle is past and there is something akin to silence (to ending).
It is right that Dwalin should be there first. The others could not bear to share many words with their dying leader, even Balin—especially Balin, who is his oldest friend. But Dwalin and he have known each other always as warriors. Dwalin will not break. Not like Thorin broke. Dwalin will do what Thorin now cannot.
His strength is failing. He must choose his words with care, for there is no telling which will be his last.
But when he opens his bleeding lips to force out what he must ask, the only words that come forth are their names.
"They were good lads," Dwalin mutters, and the tears mingle with blood upon his face.
"They were mine," Thorin answers. For the first time, the grief takes him, and he would weep, he thinks, if he still could.
Theirs is a heritage of blood—his grandfather and his father, his brother and his nephews and himself. Only his sister remains, and Thorin knows that it is she whom he has wronged more than any.
He cannot rest, not at the thought of her—he cannot enter the eternal halls without a plea for her forgiveness.
"Tell Dis—" he begins, but halts, because he does not know what Dis would wish her dead brother to say. "Tell her I am sorry." He says it heavily, because it is nothing, a poor offering in face of everything and everyone (her children, whose eyes lighted up for her, whose laughs she knew best and will hear no more) she has lost.
Dwalin's hand is firm on his, the battered knuckles scarred with the long history of their people, of their friendship, of their blood. "Consider it done," he says, and there is no loathing in his tone, though Thorin knows he deserves it—deserves it for what he let his greed and ambition and his martyr's cause do to all of them.
The martyrs were his nephews, cold and lifeless, at the foot of a mountain that was never a home to them.
"I'll tell her they died heroes," Dwalin promises, as he rises and bows, his eyes lingering for the last time on his king.
It is all wrong, and Thorin knows it. Dis will not wish to hear how they died.
Dis wanted them to live.
But Thorin lets Dwalin go, lets him bear that message, because in the end, it was the only heritage he knew how to give them.
So, these are the words he sends to his sister. And he knows that she will never forgive him, never forget them, and that she will understand.