When Frodo bolted out the door, Thorin reacted on instinct. Bilbo just stood there sputtering, horrified at what Frodo had overheard and at his flight. Thorin was already over the threshold and off in pursuit of the boy. It was no use waiting to decide whether following him was a good idea or not. If he did not pursue immediately, it would be too late, and they would never find him. He had seen the look on Frodo's face, and boys at that age did not make good decisions when in distress. He was going to get himself in some kind of trouble.
He was not at all surprised when Frodo headed for the river trail. In the dark and in the rain, it was a risky place to wander at night. Thorin's eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness, and his bad leg throbbed in protest when he slipped on a patch of grass. Frodo was barely visible on the path ahead, a silent little blur in the night.
Suddenly, he saw Frodo slow down, hesitate, and turn around to jog back up the path. He prepared to duck out of sight and let the boy make his own way home without interfering. Apparently he had been wrong about the dangers of the situation, and Frodo had only needed to let out some energy. Hobbits were more sure-footed than dwarves, perhaps the trail did not pose much of a danger to them, even in such poor conditions.
Then, when Frodo was about a hundred feet away, he stumbled, fell, and rolled all the way off the trail toward the river. Thorin heard a distant splash, and a muffled cry.
He launched himself down the path at a sprint, ignoring the howling protest from his leg, and dove off the trail at the same point where Frodo had gone over.
The impact knocked the breath out of him, from the temperature alone. The Baranduin in November was as cold as death. He gasped for air, and flailed about, restoring some feeling to his arms and legs.
Durin's folk were not natural swimmers, being too dense and bulky to float well, but Thorin had grown up near Esgaroth and the Long Lake, and knew how to handle himself in the water. What he lacked in buoyancy, he could make up for in strength.
He would die before admitting it, but upon hitting the water he had a moment of fervent gratitude that Bilbo had insisted he wear flimsy leather boots and go (mostly) unarmed about the Shire. Had he been wearing his own iron boots, or his usual arsenal of concealed weaponry, he would have sunk like a stone. And had he stopped to divest himself of those things, it might have been too late.
Too late! He splashed and thrashed his way through the water, searching for some sign of the boy. The water was rough and choppy, but he could see no sign of a little hobbit. He was starting to tire, the limited range of motion of his left arm increasing the strain on the rest of his body.
"Frodo!" he tried to shout, but it came out as more of a rasp, his voice apparently too frozen to make much sound.
"Here!" came a thin cry from a few feet away, and then a splutter. Thorin headed in the direction of the sound, and saw a curly little head bobbing up and down, desperately trying to keep afloat. The boy definitely could not swim. Just as Thorin reached him, he sank completely beneath the water, leaving only a faint trail of bubbles to mark his location.
Thorin dove, his arms sweeping desperately in a wide arc searching for Frodo. His hands closed on something solid—a wrist-and he yanked up, bringing them both back above the surface.
Frodo was struggling desperately, his arms and legs flailing. After he kicked Thorin in the jaw in his panic, Thorin shook him roughly.
"Hang on to me," he ordered.
Frodo obeyed, sticking to his side like a burr, and they began to make their way over to the shore. The bank was steep and slippery, and it took Thorin several attempts to get them out of the freezing water. Finally, he gave a powerful kick and flung Frodo onto the bank. The momentum caused him to sink beneath the water for a second and he got an unexpected nose-full of river. His legs were getting tired of treading water. Choking, he hauled himself out of the water and lay there for a moment, spluttering.
Frodo had perched himself on the bank, and wrapped his arms tightly around his knees. He was sniffling.
"I'm sorry," he sniveled, as Thorin hoisted himself off his stomach and into a sitting position.
"What for?" Thorin said, remembering one memorable childhood incident involving Dwalin, a fishing rod, and a stolen boat that turned out to have a leak. "You aren't the only one who has ever needed to be hauled out of the water after an accident. Or do you mean you are sorry for running off like a fool? Because that does merit an apology."
"I'm not sorry for that," Frodo hissed, through chattering teeth. "You heard what Bilbo said. He said he wished he hadn't adopted me. He doesn't want me!" Thorin had to admit a grudging admiration for a child that could nearly drown and still be full of so much fire.
"I heard Bilbo tell me that he could not come to Erebor because he could not leave you and would not risk your life on the Road. Does that sound like someone who doesn't want you?"
"He could have asked me! I would have told him I wanted to go. I'm not a baby. What right does he have to tell me it's too dangerous?"
"You can't have it both ways, boy. You can't want him to care for you, and then get angry when he makes decisions for your own safety."
Frodo shook his head, still furious. Water sprinkled everywhere.
"Life can be dangerous in the Shire too! My parents drowned in this river. I would have too, just now, if you hadn't been there. And Bilbo would have felt a fool for trying to keep me safe then, wouldn't he? It would have served him right!"
Thorin was well tempted to slap the boy for his foolish insolence, but hesitated to do it so soon after such a fright. He thought back to his own childhood misadventures. Thror would have thrashed him, and then sentenced him to perform some unpleasant and labor-intensive task in the forges.
And then, his heart wrenching painfully, he thought of Dís with her hands on her hips, shouting as her boys fled from certain retribution. "Get back here you little monsters! Thorin, go after them! Make them pay!" But by the time Thorin caught them, her anger had usually been spent, and her remonstrations had been gentle.
"You have not seen the world," Thorin told Frodo. "You do not understand what Bilbo is trying to protect you from. Perhaps you are right, and you are too old to be thus protected. Even so, I cannot fault him for it. I once took boys, older than you, into danger."
"Your nephews?" Frodo asked in a small voice.
Thorin nodded, shivering. His lips were starting to feel numb, and speaking was difficult.
"I judged them ready," he said. "And perhaps they were, but they and many others suffered. I lost one of them. If I could make that decision over again, I would have chosen differently. I would have given anything to protect him."
"Bilbo was there, and saw some terrible things. And so while I would hope I could convey both of you safely to Erebor, I'm not going to press the issue. Bilbo has the knowledge and the right to make his own decisions, and I have too much respect for that to try and force his hand."
Frodo was silent. Thorin was not sure if his argument had persuaded, or if the boy had merely been chilled into submission. He himself was starting to feel drowsy. His body wanted to go to sleep, and his mind was growing equally sluggish. They should start moving. If he collapsed down here, it was going to take a lot of little hobbits to haul his body back to Brandy Hall.
"I'm sorry," Frodo said at last. "About your nephew. And thank you for pulling me out of the water. I really would have drowned."
"That much was apparent," Thorin said. "Be more careful around the river, if you don't intend to learn to swim." He staggered to his feet and offered Frodo a hand up. Frodo was too shocky and cold to walk, and his legs immediately went out from under him. Thorin swung him up onto his shoulders, and made his way carefully over the riverbank and up onto the path.
Frodo was so light that his weight was barely even noticeable. It was nearly a century since Thorin had carried a child. It was not something he had expected he would ever do again. It was very strange to him, how many children there were in the Shire. And so many of them were girl-children! Even the small number of children being born in Erebor sometimes seemed a shock to him, after all those years in the Ered Luin with almost no children at all. In Erebor, an orphan like Frodo would not have grown up thinking himself of little value, nor would he have been lost among a herd of cousins. He would have been brought up properly.
Bilbo met them at the top of the trail. He was carrying a torch and wearing a cloak against the rain, apparently just coming out to look for them. His worried expression lifted immediately when he caught sight of them, and then descended again as he took in their bedraggled states.
Thorin was again painfully reminded of Dís. How many times had he dragged home an errant child to be met by just that expression? The look on her face, saying "I knew you would bring him back, but for goodness' sake, did you have to take so long?"
Thorin stumbled, and Frodo quickly swung down from his back. His legs felt a lot stronger now, and he wasn't shivering so much. The rain had stopped, and he was starting to dry off.
Thorin, however, was a lot bigger, and had a lot more hair and clothing. He was still soaked through. His teeth were chattering audibly, although he was trying to hide it by clenching his jaw tightly. Frodo felt a flush of shame. It was his fault Thorin had gone into the river, and then he had made things worse by sitting around and arguing instead of insisting they go back right away.
"We had better get you two inside," was the first thing Bilbo said. Quickly appraising the situation, he led them to the nearby front doors of Brandy Hall, rather than to their own little guest-house. Scores of curious Brandybucks clustered around to see the strange sight—one wet young hobbit, one very wet dwarf, one dry older hobbit.
"Out of the way," Bilbo snapped, finally in his comfort zone. He brought them into one of the larger side parlors, where there was a roaring fire in the grate, ordered for blankets and hot tea to be brought immediately, and evicted everyone who wasn't making him or herself useful. Frodo plopped down on the floor by the fire, grateful for the warmth. Bilbo tossed him a blanket, and he curled up in it so that only his face was visible.
Thorin kicked off his ruined boots, which made a sad squelching noise, and tossed them into a corner.
"You'd better get that tunic off," Bilbo instructed. "I don't think it's going to dry any time soon."
Thorin fumbled with the laces on his tunic, and then tried to tug it off over his head. His left arm had apparently frozen up, and he let out a string of muttered curses, trying to extricate himself from the sodden garment. Bilbo stepped in to assist before he gave up in frustration and just tore the whole thing off. Thorin didn't have that much spare clothing, and it would be a waste.
Finally, through their combined efforts, he was free. He stood before the fire, his torso completely bare except for the part of his naked back covered by long, dripping hair.
Frodo held his breath for a moment. It wasn't Thorin's physique that startled him, even though he had never seen a body that was a mass of solid muscle—hobbits tended to be round and plump.
It was the scars that he found shocking.
A gentle soul might have described them by saying that Thorin looked like he had been cut into pieces and reassembled. A more blunt one would have said that looked as if he had been hacked apart and shoved back together by guesswork. The parts of him that weren't marred by angry, raised red scars or pale white lines were pitted and gouged. Some of the scars looked like they had come from cleaner cuts, but Frodo could have sworn that at least a few must have been bite wounds.
Frodo could not even imagine what it would take to make most of those marks on a living body, nor could he imagine what it had all looked like before it had healed. How was it even possible for someone to be that injured and still be alive?
A moment later, Thorin had pulled a blanket around himself, hiding the terrible sight from view. Frodo felt relieved, and then ashamed of being squeamish. . He knew that Thorin had been wounded in battle at some point, probably in the Battle of Five Armies, but he had never realized exactly what that meant.
And Bilbo had been there, hadn't he? Thorin had told him that Bilbo had seen terrible things in Erebor.
Bilbo really did have reasons to be afraid of taking Frodo out of the Shire. Until that moment, Frodo hadn't understood what fears he might have. But suddenly, he realized that as terrible as an accident like falling in the river might be, it was nothing compared to, well, whatever had happened to Thorin.
Frodo was a burden. But not because Bilbo didn't want him. He was a burden because Bilbo was afraid for him. And he supposed that in a way, Bilbo was a burden to him to, because the thought of something happening to Bilbo frightened him.
He hadn't really known, before tonight, what true fear was. The river had changed that. Death had always seemed like something that happened to other people. But as the water closed over his head, he had felt with utter certainty that he was going to die. He was still alive, but he knew now how easy it would be for any of them to cross the boundary between life and death.
There was a commotion at the door, and Merry burst in, followed by a handful of their other cousins. Berilac and Doderic Brandybuck were there, along with the Took girls and their baby brother Pippin, who had lately been trying to follow the older boys everywhere.
"Frodo!" Merry shouted. "Are you all right? I heard you took a tumble into the river." His exclamations were echoed by the others.
Frodo wondered how exactly the news had spread all over Buckland already, when he hadn't even told anyone what happened, and then realized that he had grown unaccustomed to living surrounded by vast numbers of gossipy relatives. At Brandy Hall, it usually felt like everyone knew what you were doing even before you had actually done it.
"I'm fine," he said, forcing lightness into his voice. "I was just being stupid. I was out on the trail in the dark. Thorin fished me out right away, though," he added, before Merry could ask whey they had been out by the river at night.
Merry let out a low whistle. "That's lucky for you. You know, if you'd actually managed to drown it really would have spoiled the party. The family never would have forgiven you."
Frodo grinned. Merry didn't mean it, of course, he was just trying to cheer him up. "Well, I'd hate to be an inconvenience and spoil everyone's digestion."
Pearl Took, who was twenty-two and considered herself very grown up, crossed her arms over her chest and gave Merry a severe look.
"I don't know how you can even joke about it!" she said. "Frodo really could have died. That river is dangerous!"
"Do you have to be so serious all the time?" snapped her sister Pimpernel. "Frodo's fine, he said so himself. There's no need to scold."
Pervinca, the youngest Took sister, grabbed Frodo's hand.
"They're about to start the dancing," she said.
"For everyone who isn't already too full to stand up," Berilac broke in.
Frodo glanced back at Bilbo, who waved him on.
"You might as well go enjoy yourself," he said. "It should warm you up, at any rate. Thorin and I are heading back to the guest-house. I've had enough excitement for one night."
Frodo allowed himself to be led out of the room by his cousins. In truth, he would have rather stayed with Bilbo and Thorin. He wasn't sure what to say to Bilbo, though. He wasn't angry any more, but he felt confused about everything.
These friends had been with him for as long as he could remember, and he loved them dearly. They had been the only constant in his childhood. But after a few months in Bag End, he was starting to feel like an outsider here. If he told them about Thorin's scars, or his dreams of a faraway mountain, they would not understand. And so, there was now a part of him that he had to keep secret from Merry, Pearl, and the others.
But at least for that night, he would try to join in the dancing, feasting, and merriment, and be his old self for a while. He wasn't comfortable yet with the new one.
A/N: Well, I wanted to update quickly this time so that Frodo wouldn't be stuck in the river for weeks and weeks.
I didn't plan on ever writing Thorin POV, but he surprised me. And he finally got to be a bit heroic, which he doesn't have a lot of chances to do in the Shire.
Thanks to all of you for faithfully reading and reviewing!
