"I'm sorry Thorin. I can't marry you," Bella said quietly. "No - " She held up both hands to forestall him. "I want - that is, I wish - I mean, I would like to. Very much. Because you're wonderful. But... Oh dear." Her brow wrinkled. "Have you really thought about this?"

"Thoroughly," said Thorin, with his happiness charring once again into ash in the dragon fires all around him.

"Well, you see, the thing is... the thing is..."

Oh, but this was hard, far worse than spiders or trolls or even that creature Gollum. It was quite the cruellest and most difficult thing she'd ever had to do, or would do, if she lived to be eleventy-one - when all the time all she wanted to do was fling herself squealing into his arms. Bella could feel the weight of it settling like a stone in her stomach, and she knew with absolute certainty that she would never love laughter or music or sunlight or joy again, if she said "No" to Thorin Oakenshield...

"You are a Dwarf, and I... am a Hobbit, and... I am quite well read, you know, in history, and... and genealogy, and I... I never heard of such a thing before. I'm sorry." She blushed becomingly, hitching in a forlorn manner at the low-cut neck of her dress. Goodness, he'd torn it - and how ever was she going to explain that? "I mean, men and elves, yes. I think I'm right in saying Lord Elrond himself - "

Elrond ?! Thorin realised he was growling. What in Durin's Name did that supercilious long streak have to do with anything?

Bella sighed. "What I am trying to tell you, Thorin, is that I do not know if I can give you heirs for the Mountain."

So that was it. Oh. For a moment Thorin felt stupid, then elated as it dawned on him that she wasn't rejecting him for his own sake. Then - and it was strange that he genuinely had not thought about this before, perhaps because in every way but one he was a father already, and had been for more than seventy years...

"By Durin," he said huskily, "I should like my children in that round little belly," and he leaned forward, still kneeling, and kissed it. The words far more than the gesture brought what was left of Bella's resolve crashing about her ears. Thorin nuzzled chastely, " - but because you are my woman, not because they would be heirs to the Mountain."

He smiled up at her, and what he saw came close to felling him. She was standing with her eyes screwed tight shut, one arm trembling as it supported her weight against the side of the bridge, the other fist thrust into her mouth to stifle the sudden sobs which racked her. Her face was a crumpled wall of tears.

Her distress struck Thorin like an axe blow. He had to force himself to his feet against the pain of it before he could gather her into his arms, and Bella tried one last time to be strong and fend him off, beating her little fists uselessly against his chest. Then she gave up and just clung.

"Oh, I should l-like that," she managed, "Oh Thorin, I should like to be your wo- woman. But Ba- Balin said - " the rest was lost in a flood of fresh sobbing.

"Hush..." Thorin stroked her hair, not knowing whether to find Balin and throttle him - or leap in triumph onto the parapet yelling his battle cry to the skies because of what Bella herself had just said. "Burglar... Hush... " Soothing her as if she were a very small child or a pony, with the murmur of meaningless words and his strong, blacksmith's hands. In the end she was calmer. "What did Balin say?"

"That you are the Heir of Durin. What that m-means to you all. Did you know, some of them b-believe you are Durin? Well they do." Bella gave a sniff, a big one and rather dignified. "One day soon, Thorin Oakenshield, you are going to k-kill that dragon and re-take Erebor, and sit on the throne which was your grandfather's and should have been your father's - " Thorin gripped her tight; there was no denying how her utter confidence in him as to that strengthened his blood... " - and then you have to m-marry a Dwarvish princess and rule your people and have p- pure blooded Dwarf princes to follow you as Kings Under the Mountain. I wo- won't let the Line of Durin be b-broken, Thorin, not for me..."

Oh my funny, sweet little Hobbit, who only came with us because of a song... How ever did you come to understand us Dwarves so completely? Because she was right, he admitted with a snarl of irritation, his people were unlikely to accept anyone but a true Dwarf as their king. Not that it was an option in any case.

"Mistress Baggins," he said solemnly and with total honesty. "I swear that if ever I had to choose - " adding silently, Mahal forbid, " - between you and the Mountain... my duty to my people and my ancestors..." he smiled then, trying to soften it, with that bittersweet smile which flipped her heart on all the rare occasions she had seen it, "- I would tip you over the battlements. But I do not want you as a breeder of princes, Burglar. I want you."

When they had kissed, long and sweet in the starlight, Thorin told her, "And the Line of Durin will not be broken. I already have an heir. I have Fili."

Fili himself was still lolled on his bench, to all outward appearances relaxed in sleep, while his insides shrivelled and writhed like dry leaves on a fire. Listening to them before had been merely embarrassing. This was excruciating. And the ancient kings were no help either, not when he heard his own name...

"Kili too," his uncle was saying with a chuckle. "Our puppy who shoots like a veteran. But my golden warrior Fili..."

Uncle Thorin - ? Distantly beneath the roaring in his ears Fili could still hear the Hobbit's affectionate murmur, "Fili will be a great king, I'm sure," and his uncle's deep voice came swiftly back:

"Fili Lion-cub will be our greatest king."

Bella had heard him call Fili "Cub" before, and had thought nothing of it. Now she sensed a story. She was snuffling only a very little by this time, happy just to be held, and she was quietly entranced. She had never heard Thorin talk like this - whilst Thorin himself, in the backwash of so many churning emotions and his earlier quarrel with Fili, found that for once in his life he wanted to. "Why do you call him that, Thorin?"

All the same, it was a long while before he began to speak. "Their father was one of the finest dwarves I knew," he explained. "We called him The Lion. In jest because of his hair, in truth because of his heart. Do you know what a lion is, Burglar?"

"A leg- legendary beast?" said Bella.

"A legendary beast." It was an apt description. "If you had seen Floi in battle, you would know how such legends begin."

"And - What happened to him?" Bella prompted. She could guess the answer. The tug on her scalp as Thorin's fingers tightened convulsively in her hair confirmed it.

"Goblins," he said.