"I present unto you, Fíli, son of Dís!" Gandalf roars over the room. "True heir to the throne of Durin!"
The sound of cheering fills the room around her as Bilba stares at the young dwarf in front of her. She might as well be underwater for all she notices it as her mind whirls with the information that she has just been given. She wants to believe that Fíli has always been completely ignorant of this truth. The idea that he knows his true status and has spent all the months that they have been travelling together manipulating her into wanting him, loving him, is devastating. She wants to run. She wants it more than she believes she has ever wanted anything as humiliation burns through her bright and agonising. There are too many dwarves around her, however, all on their feet cheering and clutching one another in glee and joy, she is boxed in on all sides but she still sees the moment that Fíli's eyes land on her. His expression shifts and, for the first time in a long while, she cannot quite read what she sees there. Then Thorin steps up behind him, resting a hand on the young blond's shoulder, and the hall falls silent.
"It warms my heart to see my father's heir welcomed so warmly by our people," he says.
Bilba almost expects him to say a few more words and fall silent. Instead Thorin continues, giving a rousing speech which would, in other circumstances, have held her as enthralled as the rest of the hall is. Thorin is not one for speaking in general, in her experience at least, but when he does decide to make a speech it is engaging and well thought out. It shows that he was raised for a role before the people and she wonders whether he ever bothered to teach Fíli anything like it. She barely hears anything after the first words, swallowing down the urge to vomit as she feels every certainty she has clung to so desperately crash down around her.
She was meant to go back to the Shire, she thinks crossly, this was nothing more than a formality. Except that now she can see why Gandalf was so determined to keep her close. Gandalf knew about Fíli, Thorin knew about Fíli and that would explain why they were less than concerned about the hobbit custom of ensuring that no opportunity be presented for a young lad and lass to be alone. She was always destined for the young blond anyway. Bilba manages to slip out during another cheer, rushing through the wide stone corridors that seem to press down upon her as she searches for somewhere to hide away and gather her thoughts.
"Bilba?" Ori evidently noticed her slipping away and she pauses as he rushes to her. "Are you running away again?" He asks.
"Where would I go?" She replies, allowing him to show her the way back to the house they have been staying at. Frerin's home is close to the grand hall, for reasons that are now obvious, so it does not take them long. "I suspect that no matter where I try to go they will send someone to track me down. And I'll never find my way out of this place without help."
"Do you want to?" Ori asks her. "Leave I mean?" Bilba throws him a dark look as she marches into a small sitting room and flops onto a love seat. Her gown, borrowed from those of Adra's that Lady Bora had placed in storage after her daughter had grown out of them, slips from her shoulder slightly where it is too wide for the hobbit. Ori turns his eyes away with a blush as she corrects it. "I thought you liked him."
"It doesn't matter whether I do or not," Bilba snaps, "because I don't have a choice, do I?"
"I think I'll go and find you some tea," Ori says rather than trying to convince her that this is not the end of the world in much the way that it feels.
"Don't bother," Bilba shakes her head. "I'm just going to lie here and think for a while." She huffs. Ori gives her a level look and then steps out and pulls the door closed behind him. The lack of footsteps tells her that he has not left and she sighs as she rests on the loveseat. Everything has just become far more complicated and eventually she gets to her feet and stalks to the fire.
She stares into it for some time before a light tap on the door startles her back to reality. Her fingers fly to her pocket, brushing over the ring that she keeps close even now without even thinking about it. Whether she intends to slip it on or not she has no true idea, but she quickly snatches her hand from her pocket when the door opens.
"Can we talk?" Fíli asks as he enters.
"No," she mutters crossly.
"Bilba," he sighs, "I didn't-"
"What part of 'no' was unclear?" She snaps as Fíli comes closer, watching her. Thorin isn't far behind and she curses that even as her fingers drift back towards her ring.
"Is this really something we should let fester?" Fíli asks, stopping not far from her and his blue eyes seem to be searching for something as he looks down at her.
"You knew," she accuses and he shakes his head. "Don't lie to me, you don't have to manipulate me, I'm not stupid. You knew."
"I had no idea," Fíli insists. "Kíli knew, and he assumed I had some idea, but I never put it together. My mind was on other things, why would I have done? Do we have to fight about it? Can't we just make the best of it since we're stuck with it anyway?" He winces almost as soon as he has asked the question, but Bilba does not give him the chance to apologise.
"'Stuck with'-" she takes a deep breath, pulling her hand out of her pocket with her fingers clenched tightly around her ring. "You might be perfectly happy to let other people control your future, but I'm not!" Bilba slips the ring onto her finger as she makes her declaration.
She hears Thorin make an alarmed noise and expects Fíli to pull back in surprise, forgetting that he has watched her use the ring a number of times in the past and now realising that he has likely spotted her playing with it during many of the times that she has felt his eyes upon her. Still, she is shocked when the younger dwarf's hands shoot out instead of moving away from her, though she cannot say whether he reacts more rapidly than she had believed he could or whether she has simply moved too slowly. All she knows is that he manages to catch her arm in a vice like grip, his free hand running down to check each finger for her ring. He seems to realise he has the wrong hand quickly enough, pulling her and spinning her so that he can press her back to his chest as he searches her other hand until he finds what he is looking for. Bilba cries out in dismay as he rips the ring from her finger, flinging it into the fire without even a glance as he keeps his attention on her.
"I didn't know," he breathes softly, slowly, in her ear. "If I had I would have made my hopes for us clearer before I entered that hall. I would never ask that you present yourself to me and beg for my hand, that is my place. I should, and would, have been the one to ask you. I wanted to ask you, Bilba, and I didn't dare to do it out of respect for the duty that lay before you. We both deserve better than a hollow ceremony foisted upon us by a wizard's meddling."
He sounds confident, but when she turns in his arms she can see that he is utterly terrified. There is something of his uncle's tone in his words, but perhaps he has consulted Thorin while she has been in here alone. Dimly she hears Thorin slip past them and the rattle of the poker in the grate, but her attention is held primarily by the young dwarf in front of her who seems to have matured beyond his years suddenly. Not all of this could come from a brief conversation with Thorin and part of her wonders where this version of Fíli has been all along, even though she has seen flickers of it since the events in the Misty Mountains, or even before.
"How can I believe that?" She breathes.
"Because it is the truth," Fíli tells her. "Ask Ori or Kíli. Ask Adra. They all worked it out. Court me, please? I wanted to ask you this morning, I wanted to ask you in Erebor and I couldn't ask it knowing that you would have to refuse me. It wasn't fair to put you in that position."
"I can't refuse now," Bilba points out. "It's no less unfair."
"If you really don't want to," Fíli's face falls, "if you really don't care for me, I will find some way to release you from the obligation, I swear it."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," Bilba hisses, even though she has no idea whether the cold feeling that fills her is as a result of Fíli's promise that he will let her go or the idea that he may not be able to get them out of this mess.
"Thorin will help us," Fíli assures her. "I already asked him."
"Why?" She asks. "It isn't like I can refuse to go through with this ceremony now. Why give me the choice?"
"Because I've got my brother back," Fíli tells her, his voice gentle, "something I've desperately wanted for years. The quest for that stone may have turned my life upside down, but given what I've gained I have no right to assume I can simply take the other thing my heart desires, not if it means hurting you. So, if you don't want me just say it, my uncle will help us stop the betrothal from happening."
It is confirmation enough that he must have spoken to Thorin about this, he could not be so confident that his uncle will help them had he not already asked the question. It is oddly comforting, warming even, to know that Fíli has thought so much of her desires even as his life has been turned into something completely foreign for him.
"Then I'll court you," Bilba agrees after a moment. "And gladly."
"You're sure?" Fíli is grinning widely and she can tell that he is holding himself back.
"Would I agree if I wasn't?" She counters with a smile of her own.
She expects him to say something, make a promise of some sort or tell her that she has made him the happiest of dwarves or some other such thing. It is the way that hobbits do it after all, a courtship is only the first step towards a marriage. Instead he spins her and kisses her and this time she is not sure she ever wants to let him go. As much as she has fought against this outcome, now that it has come it just feels natural and for a while she lets herself forget how against this she was. She forgets about her smial in the Shire, her holdings and wealth, Torluc Proudfoot and all the rest. All that matters in this moment is Fíli.
The perfection of it, however, is shattered when she hears Thorin utter a loud curse and hears the clatter of metal against stone. He strides past them to the door, leaning out to grab a startled and flushing Ori.
"Fetch the wizard!" He barks at the young dwarf.
Both Fíli and Bilba look at him in utter consternation, and then the hobbit looks towards the fire. Her ring rests on the stone in front of it and she can see writing has appeared around it, glowing red against the gold. Before her eyes the letters fade and she tilts her head with a frown.
"It's never done that before," she comments without thinking.
A.N:I think this is the second week in a row that I have nothing to say in my notes. Except that crochet Fili is coming along nicely and now has clothes! Well, he has Kili's tunic because I'm waiting for the yarn for his tunic but I can use the tunic as a base so I know how big to make his coat.
