For Ygrain.
Everyone leaves something: a piece of armour, a weapon, a jewel, a word. Bard, the king of men, leaves the Arkenstone, and Thranduil, the king of elves, leaves Orcrist. Dáin, the king of dwarves, is the last one to step forth and bow before Thorin's open tomb, the last one to look upon his cousin's face. The last one to bring his parting gift.
Dáin could choose any piece of armour or weapon or any jewel; he is the King Under the Mountain now, and it would be his right to pick anything, anything. And so he does.
He steps forward, leans over Thorin's body – strong and unyielding as stone in life, quiet and cold as stone in death – and gently places the crown of Thrór upon Thorin's brow. The crown of the king.
Dáin is king now, but he does not want that crown. He will have a new one made, a simpler one, made of iron – iron is a good metal, not as noble as silver but simpler and infinitely more durable, a metal of swords and armours and mining pickaxes – iron is his name, and he is iron himself – he might break, but he will not bend. Thorin was like that, too, never bent and then simply fell, like a stone tumbling down the mountain slope, like his father and grandfather before him.
Dáin remembers Moria and the fall of Thrór, and Thorin's demise is all too sharp in his memory. He looks down, at his cousin's immobile face – calm, finally calm – and he recalls the past, and he thinks of the future.
He wonders whether the kings of the Durin's line had offended Mahal somehow, or whether it is simply the changing of the world, and those who cannot bend like trees in the wind and cannot change like trees over the course of seasons inevitably have to fall. He wonders what his own end will be like, and in what battle he will have to fall. Because when he looks at Thrór's crown – and Thorin's, for a moment, and now Thorin's forever – he does not believe his end will be peaceful and calm. No, that does not seem to be the fate of the line of Durin; from Durin, the sixth of that name, through Náin, his son, and then the first Dáin, and Thrór and Thráin and Thorin; death comes to the kings of Durin's line sudden like a leap of flame.
Dáin looks at the crown upon Thorin's cold brow and smiles grimly, briefly; a quiet challenge to fate. He does not know much about the workings of the wider world, nor of the great matters of which the wizards and sages take care, but he is a child of Mahal, and thus he knows the terrible battle was but a portent of what is to come. He can feel it in the earth and stone; not quaking nor trembling, but a stillness like that before a gas explosion in a mine or an avalanche on a steep, snowy mountain slope. He can feel, and yet there is no fear in his heart, even as he looks at Thorin's battered body one last time.
He does not fear and he smiles, because he is a child of Mahal, and thus always brave against the shadows, and he is Durin the Deathless' heir, and thus proud like Erebor and like the highest peaks over Khazad-dûm. He is stone and iron, and even though he might break and fall and shatter, he will never bend.