Hawthorn stilled.

It was the heaviest of efforts that saw her turning to the door.

"Is that him, then?" she asked, and was almost not even aware of her own voice so far away did it sound to her ears.

"I suspect so, lad."

Balin's voice is steady, and Hawthorn wishes she could cling to it. Cling to anything that would hold her steady in the face of this.

Her door has never looked so dangerous to her before. She pushes herself to her feet, and her body weighs nearly three times its weight. She pauses a moment in her doorway, eyes closing and praying to the Green Lady for strength.

Give me the roots of an ancient oak my Lady, for I do not know how I will weather this storm.

Her shoulders roll for a moment and she straightens herself up. Every inhale is strength bleeding into her bones, every exhale is her worries on the wind. She is an oak, an ancient oak, and she would hold steady.

Like the earth, like the land. She had been scorched into ash, but this was a time of regrowth.

Hawthorn pushes the door open, and her eyes drift up and up-

Gandalf.

It is a relief to see him there, and still a disappointment as she had braced for another's face. The nagging irritation momentarily overwhelms her panic and her tone is accusatory.

"Oh, you, confounded wizard!"

Gandalf's eyes glimmer in good humor, even as he shuffled discreetly back, out of the range of her feet and for one absurd moment, Hawthorn is tempted to dart forward to kick at his shins anyway. She strangles the impulse because it's not as if Gandalf had any hand in the time travelling.

"Bilbo Baggins," he returns the greeting, supporting her falsehood about her gender, and Bilbo is greatful. And annoyed because it was extremely unpleasant to deal with this the first time around and she had very nearly grabbed a knife and- well, that's in the past, now isn't it? Or her future in this case, perhaps.

"You fool of a wizard, you meant to overwhelm me with dwarves! Tall, impolite dwarves with axes and swords, and there was scarcely a word to me! That was a rather rude way of introductions I would say! There might not have been enough food," Bilbo nearly wails in the end, honestly distressed.

To her satisfaction, Gandalf winces and looks properly chastised. And well he should! Imagine- a Hobbit without enough food for her guests! A Baggins of Bag End without a proper meal for her Company!

"Ah. Do forgive a wizard his joys, young Bilbo."

She folds her arms over her chest, and stares thunderously up at him for a moment before her face finally softens in amusement.

"Ah, my old friend I would forgive you much even if it was just for my mother's sake. I would see that you took your boots off at the door however; I will not be cleaning up messes before we leave on the morrow. Should you leave your great staff with the other weapons that would be appreciated, though I offer you the same courtesy I offered the dwarves in my dining hall- if you wish to take your weapon to my kitchen do not pull it at the table!"

Gandalf stared at her in surprise for a moment before he threw his head back to laugh.

"Ah, my dear Bilbo! The very image of your mother, I see! You seem to have everything well under control, as I should have expected from Belladonna Took's child. I shall take my shoes off and leave my staff, as I'm sure Master Oakenshield will do as well."

It was well enough that Bilbo had already stepped aside for Gandalf to duck his way inside, for if she had been in front of the door when he spoke of the companion he led up her path, she would have frozen. Well that she had already been out of the way, as she could not have been able to pry her feet from the floor as he followed behind the wizard.

"Ah," she head her voice from a great distance. If Fili and Kili had rent great holes in her heart even as they healed them by living again, seeing Thorin….

Thorin her Great Sun living and whole, breathing and just as she remembered him-

Oh, but that had shredded her very heart from her chest!

How would she ever put it back to rights again, she wondered, when the very sight of him tore at her so?

"This must be the missing thirteenth member of the Company. Well met, Master Oakenshield, Bilbo Baggins at your service."

Bless her Baggins grandmother and her ruthless ingraining of manners. The lessons were so firmly set there was no escaping them. Otherwise Bilbo would not have been able to speak past the lump in her throat, for her mind had frozen on the sight of a whole and hale Thorin Oakenshield. He wasn't even glaring at her and oh.

He moved closer and there was that expression on his face and there was that look in his eyes and he opened his mouth and Hawthorn holds her breath.

"You look like Frerin," Hawthorn Baggins says rather abruptly and watches as Thorin's face leeches of all color.

For a single shining moment, the King Under the Mountain stands absolutely speechless and utterly shocked in front of her. Her jerks in place, a subtle but obvious thing to her, as if she had punched him hard enough to break that dwarven nose. From behind her, there's a cacophony of short, harsh gasps and the sound of several things being dropped. The Baggins in her is screaming about propriety and manners and oh goodness gracious me, Great Lady, what did I do?

The Took is firmly in control so Bilbo barrels on. She'd already stuck her foot in it, there was no way she could have stopped there anyway at this point.

"I mean, you look like Frerin would have looked if he dyed his hair and still lived because you're older, but the beads in your hair look about the same, even if they're a bit different and I thought it was just a coincidence that Fili looked so much like him, line of Durin and all, but you look almost exactly like what I remember, because I was just a faulting and he died not long after- after- oh dear," says Bilbo in tones of horror, trying desperately to stop talking because this is not how she wanted this to go.

She's babbling, but she can't stop herself. It pours from her mouth like the water from a fall, and she can feel her body tensing. A cold sweat breaks out on the back of her neck and she finds herself blinking rapidly because her eyes might be misting. She senses the crowding of the Company at her back, and it wreaks havoc on her instincts, as part of her trusts these dwarves with everything, but she also knows that to them she is a stranger that speaks of a long dead and dearly beloved Prince.

Her hands go to her lips, and blinking harder only lets the misting eyes to drip a few tears to her cheeks.

"Oh, I am sorry. I am sorry, you remind me so him and he was beloved by me. I do not mean to- I did not mean to say that, I did not think to-" she pulls in a hash breath, closing her eyes and pulling in hard breaths, forcibly control her reaction. "Forgive me, Master Oakenshield, it appears my mouth has run away with me."

Thorin's face twists in that subtle way it had taken her so long to learn the first time around, and she knows she has grieved him, even as his eyes lighten a bit with a darkened hope.

She remembers in Erebor, after the dragon and before the gold lust, how they had taken care of the bodies at the front gate. She remembers the soft voice Thorin used when he began to tell her of his brother, his golden haired brother who Fili resembled, and how he knew Frerin was dead, but a body had never been found. For all Thorin and Dis knew, Frerin had rotted in a ditch somewhere, his bones would never be found, never be returned to the stone as their culture and traditions required.

"No- No, Master Baggins, you are correct. Frerin was my younger brother. I did not think to hear him spoken of here when I have known him to be long dead. How do you know him?"

Bilbo pulls in a deep breath at the emotion that she can see Thorin visibly fighting off. His face is carved from stone but his shoulders are tense and his hands are curled into fists by his sides. There is something vulnerable and pleading in the lines of his face and it hurts. It hurts like Fili screaming Kili's name and Dwalin repeating Thorin's name over and over-

"My grandparents," she begins, because she cannot deny him this, anymore than she could ask the sun to set in the east, "they found him after a great battle. He always refused to share what battle we had found him from. All my grandparents could learn was that he escaped his captor and collapsed outside the Shire where they found him and brought him to their home."

She swallows hard at the way blue eyes darken at the word captor, before she continues softly, "I was a fauntling at the time, staying that summer with my grandparents as my parents had business outside the Shire and could not look after a fauntling on the roads. I would not discover until later that Frerin had suffered an internal injury we could not save him from. He lived a while after we pulled him from the lands around the Shire, but he could not travel and knew he had a short time left in the world."

Bilbo lifted her head, shoulders back and straightening her spine. Her eyes met Thorin's solidly as she spoke of his younger brother.

"He was a beautiful soul, kind, clever and mischievous even all the way up until the end. He had infinite patience for the curious and playful fauntlings who demanded stories of far away, and who were not aware of his wounds until much later," she says with the barest edges of grief coloring her voice, before she carries on with a fond smile, "I was his favorite, always able to coax one more story, or to get him to agree to allow me to stay for just a little longer. He had all the steadiness of the Great Trees, and a will as relentless as river rapids. I remember sitting in his lap and tugging on braids, asking a thousand and one questions."

Hawthorn's smile is bittersweet as she stares into the steadily paling skin and ever tightening eyes of Thorin. She doesn't mention the absolute silence behind her apart from the Company's breathing, nor does she allow her gaze to stray to his shaking hands.

"He answered what he could of them, told me some of the meanings for his braids and beads. Told me he had siblings, though not who for he never named his House to my own, even though I asked most insistently."

At the mention of beads, her hands lift to her hair, fingers sliding in to pull out a single four strand braid, the end weighted down by a onyx bead. Thorin takes a sharp breath as he recognizes a symbol of mourning and his hands reach up for her braid. He pauses, his gaze shifting to hers and she only holds it up in acceptance. He is entirely gentle as his callous fingers grasp the tiny bead in her hair.

She has another braid, only that one ends with a clasp of simple gold, declaring her to have gained the friendship of the line of Durin. She hesitates for a moment, debating on if she should show that one too, but blue eyes shift beyond her braid still in his hand and she knows he's already spotted it. He doesn't reach for it though. It's still buried in her hair and dwarrow are careful about consent and permission and she has given him only leave for one braid.

She doesn't speak, as he seems to come back to his usual stoic and grim self as he takes a single step back from her personal space.

"Your grandparents," Thorin says, his voice gruff and tight, "Where do they live? I would like to speak with them."

Bilbo smiles, a soft and sad thing.

"It is late this night, and they would not be awake at this hour, but I would be glad to bring you to see them on the morrow. And your brother," she adds, because she knows Thorin would not ask, "we are not familiar with your culture, but we honored what we could of his traditions- those that he shared with us. Frein lies buried in stone, and clad in the armor we found him in, cleaned and fixed as we could make it, his sword clasped in hand. The Thrain of the Shire spoke over him, what he knew of him in life and asked that the Green Lady deliver his soul safely to her husband."

Thorin looks like his heart has been ripped from his chest and then bludgeoned over the head and Hawthorn takes in a breath that isn't as steady as she'd like it to be. She continues on, because this is important. Thorin has precious little happiness as it is. This, she can give him.

"He was a marvelous artist, your brother. He liked to draw the Shire while he was here, and the fauntlings that came to see him. Now that I look upon you, I recognize your face in some of his work. Your and what I gather is his- your- sister, are predominantly featured. I have- As I said, I was a favorite fauntling of his, and so when he- I received a sketchbook of his."

Even though she stutters over the secret of her identity and the subject of Frerin's death, she doesn't hesitate to stride to the side, heading for the bookshelf where she left it. She tucked it away on one of the higher shelves, so she stretches to pull the handbound book she had taken from her grandfather's home. Her hands tighten almost involuntarily around the smooth leather before she turns to face Thorin.

He's followed her out of her entryway and she can very clearly see the entire company lingering just in her line of sight. Fili and Kili stand at the front and she looks away because there's a fragile quality to their expression, like one hard strike of a hammer may shatter them.

"I did not think we would ever see his House in the Shire, so I believed that none would ever know he rested here. I thought that my family would be the only one to remember him, for we did not know who to ask about the brave dwarf who had passed in my grandfather's halls."

She brought the book closer to Thorin, and carefully opened it to the 'Princess Thorn' picture. It was the smallest of noises, the most subtle catch in his breath that escaped him, but Hobbit ears were not idly called sharp, and so she heard the sound of pain Thorin made at the sight of his brother's familiar hand.

"That's Hawthorn, the Thain's favorite granddaughter. Frerin called her 'little princess', but this is not what I wanted to show you, Master Oakenshield," she pulled her objective from behind that page, tucked safely away from prying eyes and held up a Durin Blue ribbon edged in gold the exact shade of Fili's hair. Rather, Frerin's.

She heard the entire Company draw in sharp, stuttering breaths. She caught the passing shapes from the corner of her eyes and she knew it was Fili and Kili who now stood at her sides, although still a short distance away.

She had threaded the the ribbon through the bead and clasp of mithril set with sapphire, diamonds and engraved with an elegant hand with the Crown of Seven Stars, that declared Frerin a direct heir and Prince of the Line of Durin, before carefully knotting the ends of it off.

"I thought to hold on to this in memory, but as you are his brother, I suspect you will hold these more dear than I ever will. These are the one bead and the clasp he treasured best, so it was the one I kept. Grandfather holds the rest of them."

Hawthorn turned the page to reveal a much younger Thorin, drawn with a smile on his face and a training sword in his hands and laid the ribbon across the paper. She extended it to Thorin, who stood for a moment, still as stone.

His hands didn't shake, but the overwhelming emotion was shown in his eyes far more vividly than she first realized. She had taken the air from his lungs with a sudden unlooked for pain, and yet...His eyes had brightened somewhat, despite the pain of it. It was as if she had lanced and infected wound- painful but healing all the same. He was gentle as his hands folded over the ribbon lifting it to his eyes.

"Aye," he whispered hoarsely, "these are dear, more than you would know, Master Baggins. My thanks, for you have done me a great service I did not think could ever be done."

(Bilbo remembers a night surrounded in bodies of long dead dwarves, and the whispered terror he had shared that he never knew what became of his brother's body. How he had mourned that he could not be sure his body would be encased in stone and shielded from those who would tear and ruin him. She has assuaged him of that fear in this moment, and it makes her warm despite the sorrow of the moment.)

Hawthorn draws herself up and turns sharply to the rest of the Company still lingering. She sees Oin with his horn to his ear, with frustration on his face and knows Gloin will fill him in later, but for now…

She claps her hands and when almost everyone's attention returns to her, she gestures to the kitchen.

"I don't know what you've heard of Hobbit hosts, but it's an insult if the food at the table goes cold! Discussions should take place after dinner has been eaten and the dishes cleared away, honestly, I cooked for a Hobbit's appetite, perhaps I should have cooked for a Man's?"

It's a very obvious deflection in order to give Thorin and his sister-sons some privacy and Bilbo thanks Yavanna herself that it works. Dwalin stands at the front and she only has to level him a stern look before he turns on his heel and uses his bulk to herd the rest of the Company back towards the food. She inwardly cheers when she chances a quick look over her shoulder to see Thorin pressing his forehead against Kili's before he pushes them after her.

Their eyes catch, peridot green and Durin blue and Hawthorn's traitorous heart skips a beat and her cheeks color. She slips in through a gap between Nori and Bifur and pops out in front. While she arranged herself at the front of the table, she left the other end open for Thorin.

"Now! Tell me," she smiles at the group of dear, dear, dwarves in front of her. And if there is a deep sorrow not only in their eyes, but in her own, well no one mentions it to anyone else, "has everyone found something to their liking at my table? No one has any allergies do they? I would rather no one suffers any issues on my carelessness!"

Bombur, Malah bless that dwarf, answers easily from his place on the left side of the table, in front of her Uncle Nightshade's prize winning dumpling stew.

"No lad, we don't have any allergies, thank the Maker. And I most certainly find I love this dumpling stew! It is the best I have found outside my own mother's!"

Bilbo blushed outright and smiled happily.

"Well!" Her grin widened. "That is quite the compliment Master Bombur, that I would rival a mother's beloved recipe! And the rest of you? I should hope I do not only please one of my company tonight!"

Various answers came across the table, each of the dwarves mentioning a dish or three they were found of. She always knew their favorites though, for they horded them close to their plates, and she had seen Bombur lash out twice with a spoon to smack hands away from the pot of dumpling stew in front of him, same as she had seen Dwalin stab a fork into her table, missing Nori's fingers by the barest of centimeters when he reached for a pumpkin cake.

Hawthorn's eye twitched and she smiled because Dwalin stabbed her table. Her table that her father carved for her mother.

"Dwalin," said Bilbo pleasantly, "Refrain from damaging my father's first courting gift to my mother."

All the dwarves froze at the table. She knew well how they treasured the first courting gifts they gave to their Ones. She had been told in halting tones in the Before that dwarves only ever loved once, wholey and utterly, with everything that they were when it came to their significant others. It was not that they could not love others, but that they loved their One with the intensity their Mahal had meant for them to have in Creation. Dwarves felt their emotions more intensely than Bilbo knew what to do with, to be honest.

Anger was rage, happiness was euphoria, sadness was an all consuming grief. Loyalty was a living thing in their breasts, a friend until the Unmaking.

So when they chose it was an all consuming and forever choice.

Dwalin gently and carefully pulled her silver fork from the sanded wood of the table and quietly offered his apologies, which Hawthorn accepted easily.

Her smile softened and she couldn't help but remember. The story behind that was rather amusing as when Bungo Baggins had presented it to Belladonna Took, she had stared in silence for a full thirty seconds before haltingly asking where she was supposed to put it. That was when he lead her to Bag End. That was when her mother said yes.

Thorin, when he finally joined the table only faltered the slightest of steps at the sight of all the food. She remembered well shared stories of starving, of going without so his family could have more. This was likely more food than any of the Company had seen in a long while. She well remembered the pain of the Fell Winter and starving herself, where the Shire was empty of all its colors and was instead filled with silence, with nothing alluding to the once bright and brilliant place. It had been a struggle every hour of the day until the Ranger, the Dunedain had slaughtered enough wolves and brought food to help them through the unnatural winter.

She knew that agony.

If she could prevent it for anyone she would do so, but especially for those she cared for.

Bilbo pretended not to see the way Thorin's eyes widened when he tried her honey roast peaches, but it was a struggle to not start laughing when he washed it down with the mug of honey mead that had mysteriously appeared at his elbow. His eyes lit with a challenging light, and he attempted to subtly pull the entire plate of peaches in front of him even as she heard him growl- actually growl deep in his throat- when Bofur tried to touch the mead.

Oh, but he was not so subtle as he would believe. Still, she made no mention of it, and pretended to be quite oblivious to dwarves hoarding their favorite dishes like they were gold. Instead she refilled plates where she could, and brought out her good ale and meads.

She would need her pantry empty of perishables before she left after all.

The meal passed pleasantly, with conversation of a wide range of topics and roars of laughter as everyone ate their fill. Ori- blessed, sweet Ori- was the first to approach her, a familiar, "I'm sorry Master Baggins, but where should I put my plate?" escaping her lips.

"Oh!" Bilbo starts from her spot, rising from her seat to quickly direct Ori to the kitchen, with instructions to simply leave her plate in the sink and her silverware in the bowl to the side. She's already washed everything, save for the dinnerware and serving dishes in use so cleanup shouldn't take very long.

"Please, every time I hear you call me that, I turn around to look for my father. I would appreciate it if you would simply call me Bilbo," Hawthorn paused, and though she does not expect all of them to take her up on the offer, she offers all the same to the Company at her table. "I would have you all call me such. But now that we have been fed and watered, I would like a fuller explanation, Gandalf Greyhame! What exactly is it that you wish me to do? Yes, an adventure to help these dwarves, but with what? What would you have me do?"

She already knows, of course, but she prepares to pretend everything she's about to be told is terrifying and fascinating and that's there's enough Baggins in her to make her hesitate.

She suspects she'll hold out until breakfast to tell them that there wasn't any question in her joining them.

(Not that they know Bilbo Baggins is anything but a soft Hobbit lad.)